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<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/ecology/index.html">Romanticism and Ecology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded">
<h2 style="text-align: center">Romanticism &amp; Ecology</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">Introduction</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center">James McKusick, University of Maryland, Baltimore County</h4>
<ol>
<li>
<p>English Romanticism first emerged as a literary movement from a heady combination of political revolution and cosmic optimism, nowhere better expressed than in William Wordsworth's famous lines on the French Revolution: "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, / But to be young was very heaven!" (1805 <i>Prelude</i>, book 10, lines 692-693). With the fall of the Bastille and the triumph of the Rights of Man, the possibilities of human liberation suddenly seemed limitless. And this dramatic revolutionary process was not confined to the realm of political institutions; all of human society was caught up in the sweep of revolutionary transformation. In response to Tom Paine's <i>The Rights of Man</i> (1791-92), Mary Wollstonecraft penned her radical treatise, <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i> (1792), arguing that women are entitled to full equality with men in politics, education, and economic opportunity.</p>
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<p>The unbounded liberation of human society was accompanied by a dawning realization of the interconnectedness between human beings and all other living things. Erasmus Darwin, in <i>Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic Life</i> (1794), argues that "the features of nature . . . demonstrate to us, that the whole is one family of one parent." In his scientific epic poem, <i>The Botanical Garden</i> (1791), Darwin endows plants with lustful human attributes, and in <i>The Temple of Nature</i> (1803) he offers a theory of evolution that foreshadows that of his grandson, Charles Darwin, in seeking to demonstrate the affiliation of all living things in a family tree reaching back to the primordial slime. If humans are truly related to all living things, then all living things must be entitled to a share in the "natural rights" that will surely be vindicated in the progress of human liberation. The Rights of Man are only a staging-point along the road to the Rights of Animals, and this road in turn will lead eventually to the total liberation of all living things.</p>
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<p>Indeed, to many of the Romantic poets, the natural world was regarded as a full participant in the progress of liberty. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in his poem "To a Young Ass" (1794), declares his brotherly love for this humble beast of burden: "Poor little Foal of an oppressed race!" (line 1). Wordsworth, in "Lines Written in Early Spring" (1798), expresses a deep sense of kinship with the entire natural world: "To her fair works did nature link / The human soul that through me ran" (lines 5-6). William Blake, in <i>America: A Prophecy</i> (circa 1793), offers a visionary narrative of the liberation of the natural world from slavery, tyranny, and oppression:</p>
<blockquote>The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;<br/>
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;<br/>
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk &amp; dry'd.<br/>
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!<br/>
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds &amp; bars are burst;<br/>
Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:<br/>
Let him look up into the heavens &amp; laugh in the bright air;<br/>
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,<br/>
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;<br/>
Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.<br/>
And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;<br/>
They look behind at every step &amp; believe it is a dream.<br/>
Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, &amp; has found a fresher morning<br/>
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear &amp; cloudless night;<br/>
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion &amp; Wolf shall cease.<br/>
(Plate 6)</blockquote>
<p>For Blake, the fall of Empire will result in the redemption of nature, a rediscovery of the human place in a dawn of almost ineffable beauty. The word "Spring" works in this passage as both verb and noun; the captive springs forth into a "fresher morning" of springtime. The Lion and Wolf, erstwhile fierce predators, will lie down with the lamb in a millennial rebirth of innocence. Harking back to the Biblical theme of a peaceable kingdom (most memorably expressed in Isaiah 11.6-7), Blake envisions a world where all creatures live in peaceful harmony, a redeemed community of living things no longer "red in tooth and claw." The same theme is apparent in the art of Edward Hicks (1780-1849), whose painting <a href="http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pimage?59644+0+0">"The Peaceable Kingdom"</a> offers an archetypal image of unfallen nature in the American Eden. For Hicks, the Biblical depiction of wolf and lamb, leopard and kid, lion and calf, peacefully dwelling together, provides a compelling model for the ways that people of different ethnic heritage can create a community of mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence. In the historical background of Hicks's painting, William Penn is shown in the midst of a semicircle of Native Americans, negotiating the peace treaty of 1682. By juxtaposing American history with Biblical archetype, Hicks implies that Penn's treaty offers a nonviolent alternative to the militaristic and ultimately genocidal practices of the American nation in its relentless westward expansion.</p>
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<p>For the English Romantic poets, nature is more than just a passive beneficiary of human endeavors to bring about social and political transformation. The natural world is pervaded by revolutionary energies that contribute to the cause of human liberation. Poised on the brink of revolutionary possibility, nature is imbued with an awesome life-giving potential, as well as a terrible power of destruction. For Percy Bysshe Shelley, the looming mass of Mont Blanc is an ominous harbinger of death, bearing a threat of apocalyptic devastation almost beyond the scope of human imagination:</p>
<blockquote>Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin<br/>
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky<br/>
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing<br/>
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil<br/>
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down<br/>
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown<br/>
The limits of the dead and living world,<br/>
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place<br/>
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;<br/>
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,<br/>
So much of life and joy is lost. The race<br/>
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling<br/>
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,<br/>
And their place is not known.<br/>
("Mont Blanc" lines 107-120)</blockquote>
<p>Both natural and human communities are liable to be destroyed by the implacable power of the avalanche; no bird, beast, or insect can escape its dreadful wrath. Like the Old Testament Jehovah, Mont Blanc is utterly unpredictable, often wreaking terrible destruction upon the guilty and innocent alike. However, by invoking the concept of nature as a dwelling-place for all living things, Shelley suggests that there does abide a deep kinship between "the race of man" and the living creatures that surround and nourish us. The sheer vulnerability of humankind in the face of nature's destructive power may serve to remind us that we do coexist with other living things in a single dwelling-place, a global ecosystem. Moreover, Shelley asserts that Mont Blanc can exert a more positive influence upon the course of human events; it has "a voice . . . to repeal / Large codes of fraud and woe" (lines 80-81). Here again, as in Blake's America, nature is not merely a passive witness to human existence, but may become an active participant in the historical process of human liberation from tyranny and oppression.</p>
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<p>Shelley's political views were deeply influenced by William Godwin, who argued in <i>An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice</i> (1793) that the process of human liberation is historically necessary and inevitable. In Godwin's view, personal volition plays no role in the gradual emergence of humankind from subservience into freedom and equality. Rather, like a force of nature, the progress of Reason will certainly triumph over "the spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud" (Book 8, Chapter 3). According to Godwin's doctrine of Necessitarianism, "the inherent tendency of human intellect is to improvement," and therefore humankind will inevitably succeed in establishing "a state of society [that] is agreeable to reason, and prescribed by justice" (Book 8, Chapter 5). Godwin offers a glowing description of this future state, where all people share equally in the "bounties of nature" and are free to "expatiate" in the realms of intellectual discovery:</p>
<blockquote>In a state of society where men lived in the midst of plenty, and where all shared alike the bounties of nature, these sentiments would inevitably expire. The narrow principle of selfishness would vanish. No man being obliged to guard his little store, or provide, with anxiety and pain, for his restless wants, each would lose his individual existences in the thought of the general good. No man would be an enemy to his neighbour, for they would have no subject of contention and of consequence, philanthropy would resume the empire which reason assigns her. Mind would be delivered from her perpetual anxiety about corporal support, and free to expatiate in the field of thought which is congenial to her. Each would assist the enquiries of all. (Book 8, chapter 3)</blockquote>
<p>In Godwin's view, the existing forms of law and government will simply wither away; there is no need for revolutionary insurgency or violent uprising. Although such a view might seem naively optimistic in its conception of human nature, it nevertheless offered a viable source of utopian ideas to many of the English Romantic writers, from Southey and Coleridge (with their egalitarian scheme of Pantisocracy) to Mary and Percy Shelley (who sought to realize an intellectual community with Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva).</p>
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<p>Godwin goes on to describe the economic basis of this visionary utopian community. He claims that no one will have to work more than half an hour per day, while the rest of one's time will be spent in the pursuit of poetry, mathematics, and philosophical reflection. All superfluous luxuries will be abolished; commerce will cease; urban populations will be dispersed to the countryside. Godwin envisions a purely agrarian society in which every local community is self-governing and self-sustaining, living entirely upon the produce of the local soil:</p>
<blockquote>Every man would have a frugal, yet wholesome diet; every man would go forth to that moderate exercise of his corporal functions that would give hilarity to the spirits; none would be made torpid with fatigue, but all would have leisure to cultivate the kindly and philanthropical affections, and to let loose his faculties in the search of intellectual improvement. (Book 8, chapter 3).</blockquote>
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<p>Such a community would offer an ideal mix of physical exercise and "intellectual improvement," along with a healthful diet and friendly social interaction with other community members. Godwin further envisioned an unlimited degree of sexual freedom (since marriage would be abolished as a retrograde social institution), and he optimistically foretold a time when humans would live practically forever. On the whole, this future society sounded like a pretty good deal to Godwin's contemporaries!</p>
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<p>Godwin's ecological utopia was not only influential in his own day, but has continued to serve as an archetypal basis for all subsequent experiments in the establishment of self-sufficient farming communities. During the 1840s, the American Transcendentalists sought to establish agrarian communities at Brook Farm and Fruitlands<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/mckusick/mckusick_intro.html#1">1</a></sup>, while Henry David Thoreau experimented with individual self-reliance by building a cabin at Walden Pond. In the twentieth century, thousands of Americans sought to go back to the land, with agrarian lifestyle experiments that range from the hippie communes of the 1970s to the sprawling suburban "farmettes" of the 1990s. Perhaps the most dramatic embodiment of Godwin's ecological utopia yet attempted in North America is the vast, expensive greenhouse known as Biosphere II, constructed in the desert mountains near Phoenix, Arizona in the late 1980s. Conceived as a hermetically sealed and totally self-sustaining artificial ecosystem, Biosphere II was also planned as an experimental community in which a group of "Biospherians" would be voluntarily locked inside the dome for up to eighteen months at a time. In theory, they would spend a few hours each day growing crops, with the rest of their time devoted to scientific research. In practice, however, the Biospherians found that their living conditions were far from ideal; they spent most of their time in a desperate struggle to survive. Crops refused to grow, ants and cockroaches infested the dome, the water became polluted with human waste, while the atmosphere grew saturated with carbon dioxide. Like most Godwinian experiments, this one failed.</p>
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<p>The inevitable failure of Godwin's ideal society was foretold by Thomas Robert Malthus in his <i>Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers</i> (1798). Malthus provides a fairly convincing demonstration that no conceivable form of social organization can satisfy the innate human desire for happiness in the long run, because population will always tend to outrun the available food supply. Human populations always tend to increase in an exponential progression, while their means of subsistence can only increase in an arithmetical progression. As a result, a given population will expand to the limit of subsistence, but will then be held in check by "the ravages of war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature" (Chapter 6). Malthus offers an extended critique of Godwin's <i>Political Justice</i>, arguing that even if the ideal society envisioned by Godwin were attainable, it would soon relapse into all the miseries of the normal human condition, because its rapidly growing population would rapidly outstrip all conceivable means of subsistence. As the grim forces of starvation and pestilence begin to take their toll, the ideal Godwinian community will quickly collapse into abject misery and selfishness: This beautiful fabric of imagination vanishes at the severe touch of truth. The spirit of benevolence, cherished and invigorated by plenty, is repressed by the chilling breath of want. The hateful passions that had vanished reappear. The mighty law of self-preservation expels all the softer and more exalted emotions of the soul. The temptations to evil are too strong for human nature to resist. (Chapter 10) With this grim depiction of human behavior in the face of "the chilling breath of want," Malthus provides an all-too-realistic portrait of the demise of an ideal Godwinian community. Perhaps the denizens of Biosphere II should have read Malthus before embarking upon their doomed experiment in a sealed artificial ecosystem.</p>
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<p>There is no escape from the grim calculus of Malthusian theory. Indeed, Malthus's <i>Essay on the Principle of Population</i> has proven foundational to all subsequent work in population dynamics, and it provided a crucial impetus for Charles Darwin's discovery of evolution by means of natural selection. At the same time, however, we must concede that there is something quite depressing in the gesture by which Malthus deflates Godwin's grand speculation. Like the skeptical philosopher Apollonius, who cruelly intrudes upon the wedding celebration of Lamia and Lycius (in John Keats's poem <i>Lamia</i>), Malthus has a way of ruining every party that he attends. The ideal worlds created by the Romantic imagination have trouble sustaining themselves in the presence of Malthusian gloom. Keats trenchantly describes the pernicious process by which Philosophy will "unweave a rainbow":</p>
<blockquote>There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:<br/>
We know her woof, her texture; she is given<br/>
In the dull catalogue of common things.<br/>
Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings,<br/>
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,<br/>
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine -<br/>
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made<br/>
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.<br/>
(<i>Lamia</i>, lines 231-238)</blockquote>
<p>Mean old Apollonius! Given a choice between the luminous beauty of the rainbow and the "touch of cold philosophy" (line 230), who would not choose the former?</p>
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<li>
<p>Herein lies the essential dilemma of Romantic Ecology. The modern science of ecology is founded upon a bleak Malthusian calculus of scarcity, a world of limited resources where organisms must struggle to survive. The competition among individual organisms for scarce resources is absolutely essential, not only to the modern ecosystem concept, but also to the Darwinian theory of evolution, which necessarily entails "the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/mckusick/mckusick_intro.html#2">2</a></sup> To be sure, modern ecological science also places significant stress upon the concepts of biodiversity, altruism, and symbiosis, and these concepts offer some scope for understanding an ecosystem as a place where collaboration and mutually beneficial exchange can occur alongside the more ruthless forms of competition. But there is really nowhere to hide from the underlying Malthusian dynamic of potentially limitless demand for scarce resources. To the extent that the science of ecology has had an impact upon the contemporary environmentalist movement, it is largely manifested in the doomsday scenario of global catastrophe that is said to be approaching in the very near future. According to this scenario, there is very little reason for hope; the exponential growth of human population, coupled with the environmental impact of pollution, global warming, and ozone depletion, will inevitably result in a total collapse of human civilization. Probably this will occur in our own (very short and miserable) lifetimes. Malthus was right!!! We are all doomed!!!</p>
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<p>And yet there may still be reason for hope. Perhaps, despite the dire predictions of Malthus, human civilization will find a way to avoid a swift and inevitable collapse. If so, the antidote to Malthusian gloom will almost certainly be found in Godwin's more optimistic belief in the ability of human beings, as rational agents, to build a sustainable society. The English Romantic poets, working with Godwin's vision of an ideal community founded on the instinct of benevolence, offered many different versions of such a sustainable society. Godwin contributed a great deal to the utopian vision that underlies much of Romantic poetry, and although it is generally difficult to construct the blueprint of an ideal society upon such an equivocal foundation, it is nevertheless useful to examine the possible relevance that Romantic idealism may have for our own historical moment. It is the underlying thesis of this collection of essays that Romantic poetry expresses an environmental ethic; that the ideal of community among all living creatures is essential to our own survival as a species; and that there is present relevance in the Godwinian aspiration to create a sustainable society on the basis of an agrarian mode of production in local communities.</p>
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<p>Each of the essays in this collection offers a distinctive new approach to Romantic Ecology. The lead essay by Ashton Nichols offers a historical overview of the methods of observational science in the century before Charles Darwin's <i>On the Origin of Species</i> (1859), arguing that the connection between living things was conceived in this period mainly in terms of giving and receiving pleasure. Rather than engaging in a grim struggle for existence, living creatures were understood to be involved in an economy of intellectual sympathy, as described by Erasmus Darwin in his scientifically-detailed erotic poem on "The Loves of the Plants" (Part 1 of <i>The Botanic Garden</i>, 1791). In the next essay, Kurt Fosso offers some closely related insights, arguing that the Linnaean system of taxonomy enacted a Copernican revolution in the existing understanding of the place of humans in the natural world. No longer monarchs of all they surveyed, human beings were resituated as one animal among many similar, interconnected species. The Romantic poets' recurrent sense of kinship with animals emerges from this new scientific understanding of the underlying familial relationships among all living things.</p>
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<p>William Stroup's essay, "Henry Salt on Shelley: Literary Criticism and Ecological Identity," offers further evidence of the deep affinity between science and poetry in the nineteenth century. Stroup argues that one of Shelley's most perceptive Victorian readers, Henry Stephens Salt, is an important forerunner of modern ecocritical approaches to Shelley. By carefully examining Salt's interpretation of Shelley, Stroup elucidates the ideological uses to which "nature" has been put. Going beyond formalism, Salt engages with the challenging ethical and environmental ideas in Shelley's work, and explores their relevance to his own time. Modern readers of Shelley have much to learn from such an approach.</p>
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<p>Kevin Hutchings, in his essay on "Gender, Environment, and Imperialism in William Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>, examines the implications of the correlation between Bromion's brutal appropriation and rape of Oothoon's body and the figurative (but no less violent) "rape" of the natural world. Hutchings argues that Blake's poem, while overtly concerned with the issue of human slavery, is also very much concerned with the parallel conquest and "enslavement" of nature. Tim Fulford's essay, "Wordsworth's 'The Haunted Tree' and the Sexual Politics of Landscape," is likewise concerned with the issues of power and desire that lurk at the heart of male violence, whether it is directed toward the domination of landscape or of the female body. However, in Fulford's view, Wordsworth founds the English conception of nature not on rape and metamorphosis (as in Greek myth), but on a sensual playfulness - on looking but not touching. Fulford examines the political implications of this relationship to landscape, concluding that "Wordsworth's green England, by 1820 at least, is not [Jonathan] Bate's but [Edmund] Burke's, not revolutionary but conservative." For both Blake and Wordsworth, the natural landscape is figured as a domain for the enactment of male desire, whether transgressive or conservative in its political outlook.</p>
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<p>Timothy Morton has contributed the final essay in this collection: "'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth." The key themes of this essay are in certain respects complementary to those developed by Hutchings and Fulford. Morton examines Jane Taylor's poem "The Star"&#8212;a nursery-rhyme that has received very little attention from critics of Romanticism&#8212;as an exemplary instance of "ambient poetry," that is, a poem that is engaged in the representation of female identity within domestic space. Such "domestic pastoral," in Morton's view, is necessarily implicated in a dialectic between the local and the global, and for this reason it offers a novel way of reading literature with a mind for ecology. Morton's essay provides an authentically new approach to Romantic Ecology by interrogating the representation of nature by a woman writer of the Romantic period. By exploring what Morton terms "a non-essentialist form of indigenousness," this final essay further broadens the boundaries of utopian discourse in the Romantic era.</p>
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</ol>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Blake, William. <i>The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake.</i> Ed. David V. Erdman. Newly Revised edition. New York and London: Doubleday, 1988.</p>
<p class="hang">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <i>The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.</i> Ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912.</p>
<p class="hang">Darwin, Erasmus. <i>Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life</i>. 2 vols. Dublin: P. Byrne and W. Jones, 1794-96.</p>
<p class="hang">Godwin, William. <i>An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness.</i> 2 vols. London: Robinson, 1793.</p>
<p class="hang">Keats, John. <i>The Complete Poems.</i> Ed. John Barnard. 2nd ed. London: Penguin, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Malthus, Thomas Robert. <i>An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers.</i> London: J. Johnson, 1798.</p>
<p class="hang">Shelley, Percy Bysshe. <i>Shelley: Poetical Works.</i> Ed. Thomas Hutchinson. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William. <i>The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.</i> Ed. Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940-49.</p>
</div>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="indent"><a name="1"> </a>1&#160;&#160;Brook Farm was an experimental farm at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Founded in 1841 by George Ripley, this farm was an experiment in cooperative living that combined manual labor with education and intellectual conversation. Members included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles S. Dana; visitors included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, William Ellery Channing, Horace Greeley, and Orestes Brownson. An intellectual success, but a financial failure, Brook Farm finally folded in 1847. Fruitlands was another experimental communal farm of the 1840s.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="2"> </a>2&#160;&#160;This phrase occurs in the title of Charles Darwin's book, <i>The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life</i> (1859).</p>
</div>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/mckusick-james-c">McKusick, James C.</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/fosso" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fosso</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/fulford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Fulford</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/hutchings" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hutchings</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/morton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Morton</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/nichols" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nichols</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/stroup" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Stroup</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 13:12:33 +0000rc-admin31747 at http://www.rc.umd.eduQueen Mab as Topological Repertoirehttp://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/morton.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="1997-08-01T00:00:00-04:00">August 1997</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/index.html">Early Shelley: Vulgarisms, Politics, and Fractals</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div align="center">
<h1>Early Shelley: Vulgarisms, Politics, and Fractals</h1>
<h2><i>Queen Mab</i> as Topological Repertoire</h2>
<h3>by <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/shelabout.html#tmortbio">Timothy Morton</a></h3>
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<b>Material Supplementary to this Essay:</b> <br/><a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/bloodgld.html">Topoi of 'Blood and Gold' in Mary and Percy Shelley</a><br/> <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/ecotopia.html">'Ecotopia' in Mary and Percy Shelley</a><br/> <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/fractal.html">Fractal Self-Similarity in Percy Shelley</a>
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<p>I <b>WISH</b> to focus on the poetics of <i>Queen Mab</i>. The well-worn arguments of 'political' readers of Shelley have for too long been pitted against the narrative of his increasing scepticism, poetic sophistication and political disillusionment. Rather than championing an early <i>apparatchik</i>&#160; or a later poetically masterful sceptic, I would like to demonstrate the poetic sophistication of <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; and its continued use in later poems, which will look more 'political' in turn.</p>
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<p>'Topological' in the title refers both to the notion of topos and to the idea of shape and space. The topics discussed evoke a proximity to the world 'alongside' poetry and a meditation upon substitution within them.</p>
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<p>I will be talking about two topoi, which I have chosen to call <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/bloodgld.html">'Blood and Gold'</a> and <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/ecotopia.html">'Ecotopia'</a>. These topoi, resonating in the early poems and especially in <i>Queen Mab</i>, are persistently revised in later works. I will also be commenting upon the anxieties about language-as-metaphor suggested by Blood and Gold, and the poetic sophistication of Ecotopia.</p>
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<p>The notion of topos is due for a revival, especially if we are to consider seriously the recuperation of sentimental poetry and the many women poets who do not invest in the masculinised rhetorics of anti-rhetoric proffered in the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>&#160; model of Romantic-period literary history.</p>
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<p>'Topos', as commonplace, micro enough to be portable within and between poems, and macro enough to make sense of the worlds of reference supposedly outside them, makes the topology of poetry and culture Moebius-strip-shaped. Topos metonymically touches the 'inside' and 'outside' of poetry, in a somewhat ordinary, graspable way.</p>
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<p>By concentrating on topos we are looking closely at that which from a close-reader's point of view, is the most irritating: the same, the habitual. If poetry is to be read in a formalist manner as a systematic deviation from a norm or logos, then topoi are somewhat pesky phenomena.</p>
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<p>Moreover, by concentrating on topos we are also ignoring the hysterical anxiety of the historicist or cultural analyst to get out of the embarrassing world of the up-close-and-personal literary text. Nevertheless, we are also doing ourselves a favour, for what could be better than topos for conceptualising what Althusser and others have in mind when they say 'ideologeme'? So topoi are useful for a new kind of close reading, a sort of close-ish reading.</p>
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<p>Let's start with the <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/bloodgld.html" name="bgld" id="bgld">'Blood and Gold'</a> topoi, which delineate symbols in the Coleridgean sense of chunks of the Real which have somehow ended up in a textual form. They are also symptoms, marks of social weakness and woe which Shelley is anxious to erase, representing the alienating power which seems in Shelley to emanate both from the despot and from despotic capital. They are the fluids of the body and of the body politic, and they symbolise the corrosive fluid of language.</p>
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<p>They are part of the world of poison, and of language as poison, the gush from a traumatic wound in the symbolic order which Shelley desperately wants to suture with the counter-language of Ecotopia. Like the blood of the Alien in Ridley Scott's film, they appear to be more real than reality, corroding the tissue of signs which decorously protect the phallus of patriarchal power. They are the world and word of meat, the social symbolic horrorshow whose aversive qualities are obsessively traced in Shelley's poetry (and in Mary Shelley's prose) even after Shelley the person has stopped trying to eat his way out of it through vegetarianism. Derrida also has a word for it: re-mark. Blood and Gold, and meat, are those marks which establish the social symbolic order as such, as an order of signification. Shelley loathes the pockmarks they leave, those damned spots on the smooth face of meaning which will not come out and which he images in his oft-repeated lines about not killing beings which have a face (and there's an <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/bloodgld.html#macb1" name="macb" id="macb">allusion to <i>Macbeth</i>&#160;</a> in <i>The Revolt of Islam</i>&#160;). Meat is unnecessary and what is more it has to be cooked, and what is more, it has to be spiced. The efflorescence of supplements of supplements is more than he can stomach. In 1812, the biographical analogue for this form of what Lacan would have called 'extimacy' would have been Shelley's panic about elephantiasis.</p>
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<p>Shelley reproduces the Paineite and French Revolutionary rhetoric which needs to know through sight: to register truth on the revolted body. He recoils against the notion of language as transubstantiation, in other words, as metaphor, as meat, as re-mark, or what William Keach skillfully calls 'incarnation'. So what he says about the vital metaphoricity of poetic language in <i>A Defence of Poetry</i>&#160; is as Hogle has shown more to do with transferential agility. This kind of redeemed metaphor does not punctuate the skin of fantasy, but gently glides along it, embodying it with the metonymic richness of an environment that is, in the ecological words of <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; viii, 'habitable'. Through the gliding action Shelley hopes to iterate an algorithm, to evoke an effect which is both hyperreal and natural, in an emulsion of fantasy and reality typical of a late eighteenth-century aesthetics that seeks to fit mind and world, poetry and politics together.</p>
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<p>With the genius of phobia, Shelley is often at his best when at his most gory. The vertiginous traumas of meat and marking often generate spectacular results, like the miasmatic language of Beatrice in <i>The Cenci</i>, or the prosopopeia of <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/bloodgld.html#swellfoot" name="swellfoot" id="swellfoot"><i>Swellfoot the Tyrant</i>&#160;</a> . But if this is 'bad' metaphor, what of 'good' metaphor? Can Shelley, even in the early days of <i>Queen Mab</i>, conceive of a language which does not mark? An elaboration of ideological fantasy unpunctuated by the wound of the real?</p>
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<p>Such a language, for such a poet, would seem to fluctuate endlessly around the margins of trauma, seducing the imageless truth into emancipatory significance by its constantly repeated nuzzling. It would be mantra-like, woven into the poetry with the soothing repetitiveness of pure voice. And whose voice? None other than the voice of an Old Testament prophet, Isaiah (11:6-9). Isaiah is literalised in this mantric repetition. The lion, for instance, does not just lie down with the lamb but acquires the nature of a lamb, so that we are unsure whether he might actually have metamorphosed into one.</p>
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<p>This is Shelley's poetics of Ecotopia, which, for the sake of compactness, memorability and not much else I call <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/fractal.html" name="fractal" id="fractal">Fractal Self-Similarity</a>. I have been influenced in my discussion of fractals by Tom Stoppard's recent play <i>Arcadia</i>, which portrays a young woman understanding the fractal geometry of nature in a house visited by Byron, in a way which slips between the cracks of a non-fractal history of mathematics.</p>
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<p>'O Happy Earth! Reality of Heaven': <i>Queen Mab</i>, canto ix, line 1. It follows the ecotopian revision of Isaiah 11 in canto viii, where babies sport with basilisks and lions lie mutated into lambs, and 'no longer now / He slays the lamb that looks him in the face / And horribly devours his mangled flesh' (211). This is the living centre of Shelley's ecologocentric ideology: the place where words seem to emanate directly from things in a symbiotic relationship, like a lichen. And it is the role of likening which is so important, the role of simile. It is ideological language: prescriptions dressed as descriptions, revolutionary wolves dressed as lambs.</p>
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<p>A fractal is caused by an iterative algorithm mapping itself on a complex plane with a ratio of slightly more than one. Fractal shapes are common in nature: look at a snowflake, it contains a infinite-seeming series of tinier snowflakes upon snowflakes. Shelley often uses fractal similes in descriptions of fluids, which is appropriate, but their use doesn't stop there. Fractals are wonderful if you are a poet of nature but also a poet of desire. You are anxious about the disfigural properties of language, as evidenced by your phobic image of the sign as weapon and language as a butcher's knife, and vegetarianism as a way of eating and signifying without disfiguration. But you do not want to get rid of it entirely. That would be kow-towing to Burke and his resistance to theory. You like the French Revolution, you just get queasy at the sight of all those bleeding heads. So you have to find a way of signifying which appears to dovetail <i>intellectus</i>&#160; into <i>res</i>&#160; without a boundary. Fractals might work. Shelley's equation seems to be: Earth=Heaven, only real. They are the same . . . almost. Fractals are also significant in the notion of silent eloquence, which in <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; describes the operation of the universe and is part of the ideological structure of vegetarian language (a recent example is the role of silence in <i>The Silence of the Lambs</i> ). The notion of the universe as a 'wilderness of harmony', a revision of Milton's Eden (ii.79), is fractal: a fractal may be plotted as a line which is both wild and harmonious. The metamorphosis of lion into lamb in canto viii is also fractal: we are unsure whether he is now exactly like a lamb. It is undecidable to what extent he looks physically like a lamb (his claws are pared and so forth) while emulating the lamb's behaviour (he 'now forgets to thirst for blood', viii.124). Through the syntax of the passage the reader loses track of the lion's identity.</p>
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<p>Now consider the following, from <i>Adonais</i>&#160;: 'the moving pomp might seem / Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream' (116-7). Another instance of fractal self-similarity: pomps are pageantries, but 'of mist' maps them onto themselves with a ratio of slightly more than one. Shelley was onto this, poetically, from the start.</p>
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<p>Milton's Neoplatonic cunning in <i>Paradise Lost</i>&#160; v enables a similar form of dovetailing, where the vegetarian diet of Adam and Eve promises, according to Raphael, a smooth tempering of matter to spirit and a diet of rhetoric which may mediate the acts of God to temporal ears (v.331-505, vii.126-30, 175-79). But Milton's logic is subtractional rather than fractal, suggested by his famous reversed syntax, suggesting events which happen before they are fully told and thus outsmarting the tropological twists of rhetoric. That logic resembles Ficino's model of progressive realisations of the Good through a series of subtractions from the complex world of matter towards an ultimate perfect simplicity. While deft at employing Miltonic syntax himself, Shelley also explores iteration and thus complexity.</p>
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<p>There are examples of Percy and Mary Shelley using the topos of <a href="/praxis/earlyshelley/morton/ecotopia.html" name="eco" id="eco">Ecotopia</a>. The fractal substitutions which Percy employs in and beyond Ecotopia are also present in larger discursive strings. The revoking of the curse in Act I of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>&#160; is an example of an iterated algorithm which alters meaning through repetition. 'How did we get here?' is a question most often to be asked, of <i>Queen Mab</i>, where a most unsatisfactory image of a temporal purge displays mangled babies being plucked from the jaws of Saturn, of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i>, where the economic aesthetics of zero and infinity operate in an image of an anorexic abysm where revolutionary meaning disappears down the plughole of its own desire, or of <i>Hellas</i>, where tyranny destroys itself, a self-devouring equation which leaves us high and dry in the Hesperides.</p>
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<p>So it appears that Percy Shelley developed an oppositional poetics which pitted one kind of topos against another. But this would a) misunderstand his relationship with capitalism and b) misconstrue his sophisticated poetics, which from the start attempted to weave capitalist ideologemes into its complex geometry rather than ditch them altogether. After all, the positive register of <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; includes the notion of variegation, a kind of naturalised complexity.</p>
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<p>Shelley's use of the poetics of spice in canto viii of <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; and the 'Fragment of an Unfinished Drama' is an example of the poetry of ornamentation and sentimentality which spawned Ecotopia, and an acknowledgement that commercial capitalism has its metonymic flows as well. His poetic debt to spice undercuts his ideological aversion to meat, and spiced meat at that, and to language as supplementarity, or spicing. It is a curious iteration of the capitalist ideology which gave eighteenth-century poetry its panegyrics to long-distance trade and its phenomenology of luxury, affecting poets as diverse as Samuel Jackson Pratt, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Keats and Felicia Hemans. There, too, the turbulence and flow of capitalism is treated in ornamental poetry which exploits it in different ways, hyperbolically overdeveloping it like Keats in <i>The Eve of St Agnes</i>&#160; or showing its contiguity with sensations of contagion, corruption and violence, as in anti-slavery poetry. Shelley's Ecotopia may be said to be anti-capitalist in content but capitalist in form. Just when those cottages and rills seem to be supporting a myth of little England in the desert, a kind of mirror-image orientalism, an 'occidentalism', we are drawn to the odoriferous trade winds whose scent of luxury wafted across the ocean to the Providential nose of the English consumer. Ecotopia and hyperreal capitalism interpenetrate, to use one of Shelley's neologisms. His politics and poetics are local, but international. The best model for this interpenetration would be a fractal. It is hard to know where one stops and the other starts.</p>
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<p>The term algorithm is derived from the name of the Arabic economist, Al-Khow&#235;razmi, who invented them as a way of performing mathematical operations associated with debt and credit. Algorithms are the stock in trade of capitalist economics and it is thus unsurprising that in the late twentieth century a new form of naturalised capitalist ideology has emerged which maps stock market figures as if they were clouds: with fractals. The wild west wind-like turbulence of stock adjustments and weather patterns may be reduced to an iterating algorithm, where the result is fed back into the equation in a way which tends towards infinity. Infinity and zero are associated with the Kantian mathematical sublime, and also with political economy. The Indian economist Brahmagupta and Al-Khow&#235;razmi coined these notions in order to generate the negative numbers which in the early modern period would help balance the books in double-entry book keeping.</p>
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<p>The sublime, dizzying, spiralling poetics of Shelley, minted as he tries to fit the asymmetrical ideologies of capitalism and ecology together, persist throughout his work. For such a mind, ecotopia can only exist in a stable equilibrium, a poised shimmering of forces like the paradoxically occidental oases described in <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; viii, and it can only be conjured again through repetition, for there is no exact fit between Shelley's ideal future and the pockmarked world in which it is imagined.</p>
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<p>Perhaps Shelley, heaven forbid, wants to be considered as a new kind of poet of the Thing. As <i>The Demon of the World</i>&#160; puts it, 'No longer now he slays the beast which sports around his dwelling'. Dwellings and faces are topologically equivalent: signifiers sport and gaze upon them. They are meeting places, commonplaces, topoi, strange attractors. Things are pulled towards them. Dwellings and faces are the Thing in the Old English sense of a meeting place, quotidian not in Weisman's sense of the iceberg on which the Titanic of poetry-as-epistemology sinks, but quotidian as a meeting place in the sense of <i>oikos</i>, the root of ecology. Gasp! Could Shelley be a cousin of Wordsworth? But this Thing is not to be found amidst the <i>crudit&#228;s</i>&#160; of nature: it is to be constructed in the future by those who hate hate so much it turns into love, people who scratch the itch of metaphor so much it begins to look providential.</p>
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<p>Outside the world of the face is an aleatory chaos of mangled partial objects, money, blood, tropes scuttling hither and thither. But as Hogle has demonstrated, Shelley's Lucretianism allows him to imagine a moment of <i>clinamen</i>&#160; during which these random vectors might start to be attracted towards one another to form worlds, even ecotopias. Shelley rails against Adam Smith in <i>Queen Mab</i>&#160; v, but at the level of the ideologeme is expressed the hope that Adam Smith was right, and that an invisible hand will shape our ends, rough-hew them how we will.</p>
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<p>Shelley's fractal poetics also demonstrates something about dialectics: how simplicity, reflected into itself, becomes complexity. A triangle, negated by having a process applied to it which adds itself to itself or reflects it into itself, becomes a Koch curve, a dynamic process tending towards triangle-ness without ever simply manifesting it. Thus it is cancelled and preserved, <i>aufgehoben</i>: 'O Happy Earth! Reality of Heaven'. The common misunderstanding of <i>Aufhebung</i>&#160; as synthesis can quite clearly be seen as incorrect here.</p>
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</ol></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/morton-timothy">Morton, Timothy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/668" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocriticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/795" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fractals</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/844" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">rhetoric</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1098" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Poetics</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1233" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">topoi</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1237" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">topos</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1239" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">capitalism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1240" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">algorithm</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1241" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Utopia</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/title/queen-mab" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">_Queen Mab_</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1243" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environment</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/ridley-scott" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ridley Scott</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/timothy-morton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Timothy Morton</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:23:37 +0000rc-admin22473 at http://www.rc.umd.eduJohn Clare's "Domestic Tree": Freedom and Home in "The Fallen Elm"http://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/ziegenhagen/ziegenhagen.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><h2>John Clare's "Domestic Tree": Freedom and Home in "The Fallen Elm"</h2>
<h4>Timothy Ziegenhagen, Northland College</h4>
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<p><b>Introduction</b></p>
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<p>A complex expression of loss and anger, John Clare's poem "The Fallen Elm" speaks to feelings of powerlessness in the face of unchecked economic greed.&#160;Parliamentary enclosure and the development of new, scientifically-based agricultural practices (like crop rotation) changed the face of the poet's native Helpston landscape. In an effort to boost agricultural efficiency and to increase profits, large landowners leveled hills, rechannelled streams, and put up fences, growing hedgerows, and putting common lands under the plow. While "The Fallen Elm" describes the hidden costs of the loss of a single tree, it also explores the misuse of the rhetoric of freedom towards the privatization of the common lands through parliamentary enclosure. What was really lost as the result of this dispossession? How can enclosure in Clare's time connect with the drive towards privatization (of water rights, of intellectual property, of genetic codes) in our own? How can the loss of a beloved landscape affect one's sense of local history? By exploring these connections, students can come to a more full understanding of the complexity of Clare's great protest poem.</p>
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<p>There are two steps an instructor might take when introducing students to the sense of loss pervading the first section of "The Fallen Elm." Using Clare's poem as a touchstone, the instructor might lead students in an analysis of the intimate connections they form with very particular natural landmarks (trees climbed, caves explored), helping them to consider more generally the ramifications of this intimacy. Such an exploration will help students better understand Clare's unique sense of place, how the poet's understanding of "home" encompasses a nascent ecological point of view. An instructor might also explore the more overt political content of "The Fallen Elm," which includes a fierce condemnation of the rhetoric of freedom; this rhetoric seeks to legitimize the destruction of the natural world and the enslavement of the rural poor. Modern students of Clare's work coming from rural areas near large cities&#8212;areas transformed from farmland into sprawling suburban housing developments&#8212;are quick to make connections between the enclosure so vividly depicted in Clare's poems and the rapid "Californication" (to use an Edward Abbeyism) taking place in their own backyards. The descriptions of change brought about by the agricultural revolution in nineteenth-century England may speak to their own experiences, in which Walmart and large box retailers appear in the midst of cornfields, and rapid suburban development swallows up family-owned century farms.</p>
<p><b>I. The Fallen Elm: The Loss of an Intimate Landmark</b></p>
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<p>In recent years, much has been written about how Clare's poems reflect a proto-environmental awareness of natural systems (see McKusick's <i>Green Writing</i> as well as Bate's <i>The Song of the Earth</i>). Margaret Grainger's edition of the poet's natural history writings show his interest in depicting nature in prose as well as in poetry; impressed by the writings of Gilbert White, Clare hoped to record the natural phenomena he saw in the fields around Helpston, the small Northamptonshire town in which he lived. So precise were Clare's observations as a naturalist that Edmund Gosse complained the poet "was a camera, not a mind," suggesting that he viewed Clare's work as a collection of static images, frozen in time (qtd. in Storey 17). The essence of Clare's poetry, however, is movement, flux, process. Every new observation&#8212;a newly-discovered orchid variety, for example&#8212;affects how Clare perceives the world around him, and he delights in chronicling a world that changes from one moment to the next. John Barrell shows that in relation to the highly-structured visual landscapes of eighteenth-century nature poetry, Clare "developed a whole aesthetic of disorder" (152) in which the descriptive elements of a poem are "parts of the same complex impression, not just this <i>and</i> that, but this <i>while</i> that" (157). An ecologist by informal experience and careful observation, Clare describes not only a particular place, but a particular place at a unique moment in time, under distinct, novel conditions.</p>
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<p>Clare's natural history writings are astonishing for their clarity of perception and their objective&#8212;one even might say scientific&#8212;way in which the poet records what he observes. These descriptions of natural phenemona are not static, and he excels at "utilizing the kinetic elements inherent in the picturesque vision. . . . Clare not only admits more detail into his work than most of his predecessors, he is also aware that those details are in constant mutation" (Brownlow 116). Clare's kinetic descriptions reflect living landscapes, made up of dynamic ecosystems, changing weather patterns, human and animal activities, plant growth and decay. His constant&#8212;and, some might say, obsessive&#8212;rewriting of local scenes, bird species, and plants evidences his view of nature in flux, in need of continual "updating."</p>
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<p>To give a sense of the kinetic movement in Clare's work, the instructor might find it useful to center early discussions around how the poet "looks" at the natural world. Students could be asked to list the things that Clare sees in his poems, but also what he doesn't see: Which images stick out, and which are absent? What metaphors does Clare use, and how do these metaphors work to make the reader see natural phenomena in new ways? Nature writing tends to emphasize the visual, so students can be asked to analyze the "camera eye" of the writer; such class discussions can be speculative (especially if students have training in film theory!), but they can also help students begin to understand how Clare's poems emphasize natural systems from one poem to the next&#8212;like a series of windows framing dynamic images of the natural world. It's useful to look at bundles of related poems to build on this sense: an exploration of three bird poems together demonstrates Clare's "thick" description of habitat, how he portrays instinctual behaviors, the look of a crow as it crosses the afternoon sky.&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;</p>
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<p>Clare's writings display his strong emotional attachment to the landscape surrounding Helpston, a "rootedness" (no pun intended) and an awareness "of the relation of all creatures to a habitat in which the human observer is also implicated" (McKusick 80). To quote Edward Storey, "Clare's contact with the land was a physical one" (51). Such a connection is intimate, based on a day-to-day familiarity with a place, which is really the sum of its natural processes: The loss of a single life has a negative impact on the entire system, which becomes less diverse (and less resilient).&#160;While Clare was obviously no ecologist in the modern sense&#8212;the term ecology itself wouldn't even be coined till after his death&#8212;he nevertheless had a clear, intuitive sense of the value of a diverse ecosystem, and he could be very protective of animals, trees, streams, and even landforms. In a letter to his publisher John Taylor in 1821, Clare expresses his grief at the impending loss of a pair of old elm trees growing near his cottage:</p>
<blockquote>my two favorite Elm trees at the back of the hut are condemned to dye it shocks me but tis true the saveage who owns them thinks they have done their best &amp; now he wants to make use of the benefits he can get from selling them&#8212;O was this country Egypt &amp; was I but a caliph the owner shoud loose his ears for his arragant presumption &amp; the first wretch that buried his axe in their roots shoud hang on their branches as a terror to the rest&#8212;I have been several mornings to bid them farewell&#8212;had I &#163;100 to spare I would buy their reprieves&#8212;but they must dye. . . . (qtd. in Bate 172)</blockquote>
<p>Clare's shock at the loss of the two elms is heightened by the injustice of their deaths. Like an innocent man standing on the gallows, the trees are "condemned" to die and past "reprieve"; they must be cut because the owner wants the "benefits" of "selling them." Their usefulness to birds, or to humans desiring shade, is not considered. Such a domestic function is un-enclosable, and Clare's own emotional connection to these trees&#8212;while quite powerful&#8212;counts for nothing on a balance sheet. The poet's fantasy of cropping the ears of the "wretch" who would chop down the trees underscores the illegality of the act and links chopping trees with counterfeiting: Clare here suggests that the tree has some essential (and unenclosable) value that has been stolen by its greedy, coining owner.</p>
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<p>Clare's "The Fallen Elm" memorializes a beloved tree and exposes the injustice perpetrated by an economic system that ignores its ecological&#8212;one could say its domestic&#8212;value, requiring it be cut down. By making the tree a part of his family, Clare argues for a new relationship between humans and living things, all part of a continuous ecological whole. The opening lines of the poem beautifully portray the tree as it leans closely over Clare's cottage, protecting the poet and his family and offering a kind of gentle companionship:</p>
<blockquote>Old elm that murmured in our chimney top<br/>
The sweetest anthem autumn ever made<br/>
And into mellow whispering calms would drop<br/>
When showers fell on thy many-coloured shade<br/>
And when dark tempests mimic thunder made<br/>
While darkness came as it would strangle light<br/>
With the black tempest of a winter night<br/>
That rocked thee like a cradle to thy root,<br/>
How did I love to hear the winds upbraid<br/>
Thy strength without&#8212;while all within was mute.<br/>
It seasoned comfort to our hearts' desire,<br/>
We felt thy kind protection like a friend<br/>
And edged our chairs up closed to the fire,<br/>
Enjoying comforts that was never penned. (lines 1-14)</blockquote>
<p>The lush consonance in this passage evokes a kind of Keatsian, luxurious ease (especially when read aloud). Indeed, Clare's letter to Taylor about the condemned elms was written around the time that Clare heard of Keats's death in Italy, and one wonders if the sonorous, Keatsian qualities in the above lines represent a kind of subtle elegy. The domestic images in the poem's first thirty-six lines underscore the fact that the tree gives both protection and comfort; the soft murmur through the chimney links the elm to tender (and attentive) parental care, a detail Clare reinforces by depicting the tree as a "cradle," a safe place protecting the human family from the violence of the elements. The elm is nature's "domestic tree" (line 18); its "homely bower" (line 21) attracts children, who build "playhouse rings of sticks and stone" (line 24) under its protective branches. Social psychologist M. Kirkby has researched the attraction of children to the canopies of trees, which provide a kind of refuge associated with the safety of a home environment (1-12). Indeed, Clare's pun on the word homely&#8212;with connotations of simplicity and the domestic&#8212;connects the elm in an intimate way with the poet's own cottage, so that tree and home become inextricably associated. The loss of the tree, Clare suggests, is intensely personal, a "domestic" loss&#8212;a death in the family.</p>
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<p>Part of the tree's power is its tough longevity&#8212;it is the "sacred dower" of "time" (line 17) (again, one is reminded of <a href="http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/1129.html">Keats and his Grecian urn</a>, the "bride" of "time"). Children play under its branches, and their games establish an associative link between comfort, the domestic, and nature. Such games&#8212;tree-climbing and apple gathering&#8212;perhaps domesticate nature on one level, but they also expand human zones of intimacy to include "wild" spaces. Early childhood exploration can lead to an almost sacramental relationship with particular locales, so that these locales gain the coloring of personality, heavily invested with an individual's history. A visit to a loved spot (like Wordsworth's <a href="http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2343.html">"Tintern Abbey,"</a> to give but one example) can become a kind of ritual, an opportunity for self-reflection. The seeming permanence of the tree enables the poet to form a specific and intimate bond&#8212;one steeped in his family's continuous history. The elm is "steadfast to [its] home" (line 20), taking a kind of ownership over the humans living under it, even as the humans take a kind of affectionate ownership over it. Its destruction thus makes Clare's own family more vulnerable. As Jonathan Bate writes, "the elm tree is a temporal as well as a spatial landmark [for Clare]. Because it was there when he was a boy, it guarantees the continuity of his own life" (174-175). Clare's sense of loss at the felling of the tree is related to the intimacy of place; the elm provides a "seasoned comfort," which implies its benefits are not ephemeral (they remain, even with the passing of seasons); these comforts also add a "seasoning" or texture to cottage life. The tree, in other words, is inextricably linked to the poet's conception of home&#8212;the cottage, the immediate fields, the Helpston parish. As is typical with Clare, there are no discrete
boundaries between these different domestic spheres: They are all homes. Clare's sense of the domestic extends beyond legal ownership; after all, to love is to own, and to be owned. The very act of poetic composition is an assertion of tenancy and proprietorship&#8212;even of the fields themselves.</p>
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<p>While twentieth-century Americans might be tenuously attached to particular landscapes&#8212;feeling, for instance, a generalized but vaguely nebulous affection for the Missouri Ozarks or Glacier National Park&#8212;it is much easier to feel an intimate connection with a very particular local spot, or, even more specifically, a landmark, like a tree, a rock outcropping, a stretch of lakeshore. In looking at "The Fallen Elm" in class, an instructor will find it useful to have students inventory the "domestic" images occurring throughout the opening half of the poem. Following Bate's suggestion in <i>The Song of the Earth</i> on how to read and understand "The Fallen Elm," students might be given a brief handout with quotes from Gaston Bachelard's evocative book <i>The Poetics of Space</i>, a philosophical study that explores how places become personally significant&#8212;invested with intimacy&#8212;to human beings. A discussion of the "poetics of space," in Gaston Bachelard's words, leads to an analysis of how landmarks become invested with personal history&#8212;how "a tree" becomes "the tree," and even "our tree."&#160; Exploring selections from <i>Poetics</i> in conjunction with "The Fallen Elm," students can be encouraged to look at the term "home" in its broadest definitions to see how particular places can become so important to people. Questions about the relationship one has with one's yard (and the trees in it!), the neighborhood stream, even a city and its landmarks, can help shed light on Clare's anger about enclosure.</p>
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<p>Class discussions can also center around the relationship between place and the workings of the imagination. Natural landmarks, like Clare's elm, become associated with a sense of self, the psyche, even the powers of the imagination (a set of concerns common to Romantic poetry in general). Bachelard writes that beloved dwelling-places&#8212;from the house to the shell, to the tree&#8212;are all suggestive of protection. Such spaces are conducive to the play of the imagination. The "subtle shadings of our attachment for a chosen spot" reflect how "we inhabit our vital space...<i>how we take root,</i> day after day, in a 'corner of the world'" (emphasis added, 4). These spaces, Bachelard argues, form how one views oneself in relation to the larger world, providing space for the oneiric, the provision to dream. Like a tree, Bachelard suggests, humans must be rooted to fully engage this oneiric capacity, so closely linked to conceptions of intimacy and community. Within this framework, the removal of a tree involves a destruction of "vital space" that encourages creativity&#8212;a linkage that Clare himself explores in other poems. Seen in this light, enclosure destroys the landscape and the poet. In this set of associations, the destruction of the elm is also a murder of the human capacity to imagine and to create.</p>
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<p>The significance of trees extends beyond the personal, or even&#8212;as in the case of "The Fallen Elm"&#8212;the familial; during a discussion of Clare's poem, students will quickly name off famous trees, some hundreds of years old, and many that have tremendous cultural significance. Indeed, almost every town has such a landmark tree around which the community imaginatively anchors itself. Invariably, these trees are linked to events in human history (battles, hangings, treaty signings), and they act as living validators or witnesses of commonly agreed-upon versions of the past. We see just such a living landmark in Clare's poem "Langley Bush," which describes a tree whose "trunk is nearly rotten through" but that still evokes memories of "Langley Court" (lines 16, 7), an informal kind of courtroom held under the tree's branches. Here, Clare makes an explicit connection between a tree and judicial proceedings, suggesting that the rule of law&#8212;and justice&#8212;are tied to the preservation of the land. &#160;Unfortunately, Langley Bush was chopped down, much to Clare's regret: the "old white thorn . . . had stood . . . full of fame . . . the Gipseys Shepherds and Herd men all had their tales of its history and it will be long ere its memory is forgotten" (<i>By Himself</i> 179). Clare here suggests that trees like Langley Bush, and indeed, groves and forests, belong not just to those who own them legally, but to everyone, including&#8212;and perhaps especially&#8212;the rural poor. In his late poem, "London Versus Epping Forest," the woods become a place of freedom. Walking through the forest, Clare muses, "I could not bear to see the tearing plough / Root up and steal the forest from the poor, / But leave to freedom all she loves untamed / The&#160; forest walk enjoyed and loved by all" (lines 11-14). John Goodridge and Kelsey Thornton have linked Clare's trespass into the heavily-wooded Burghley Park&#8212;where he first read Thomson's <i>The
Seasons</i>&#8212;with freedom, imaginative play, and the composition of poetry: "It was a kind of Paradise for him, representing pastoral poetry, inspiration, nature, and the pleasurable" (91).</p>
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<p>In addition to being catalysts for individual creativity, trees also are linked to the formation of community identity. Kit Anderson has explored the cultural significance of woods and "big old trees," showing how "charismatic megaflora" are "active participants in the ongoing creation of places and landscapes" (149):</p>
<blockquote>Over time, as trees acquire symbolic meanings, even their images have power. Like all good symbols, trees are multivocal, giving them depth and endurance in human societies... The live oaks of Louisiana, so closely tied to plantation culture, turn out to have a much more complex and varied significance to people living with them today. The "sacred tree of the Maya" still has an aura of mystery, but its protection in modern Guatemala is often linked to its legal status as the national tree. Depending on where they grow and how they are presented to members of society, these trees can become integral to notions of home, nationality, ruling powers, ethnic identity, or region. (150)</blockquote>
<p>In exploring "big old trees" like ceibas and live oaks, Anderson shows how it is a short step from viewing trees symbolically (in one view, potentially, a victim of human categories and metaphors) to granting them a kind of autonomy, worthy of an ethical stance typically only accorded to sentient beings. In "The Fallen Elm," the tree has achieved this state of discrete being, and Clare recognizes its right to exist, independent of human valuations. As a being worthy of ethical consideration, the tree's qualities&#8212;its willingness to give protection, its strength&#8212;cannot be taken for granted. The protection is bestowed, not accidentally given (by virtue of the elm's immobility). In a sense, Clare's tree becomes active in the lives of the humans (thus, it assumes in a discrete way a kind of ethical relation towards them)&#8212;it is a "domestic tree," and this fact adds force to Clare's anger in the second part of the poem. In short, the tree is not merely a victim of human avarice, it is betrayed.</p>
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<p>The destruction of the elm tree is linked to the enclosure of the common lands. Even as the tree must be cut down for profit, the landscape must be parceled out and figuratively chopped up (literally "cut" by the plough). In "Remembrances," Clare imagines enclosure changing the face of the landscape so that it becomes almost unrecognizable to him: "Enclosure like a Bonaparte let not a thing remain, / It levelled every bush and tree" (67-68). In "Lament of Swordy Well," the landscape is eviscerated: "When grain got high the tasteless tykes / Grubbed up trees, banks and brushes" (59-60). In <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1408">The Natural History of Selborne</a>, Gilbert White describes the role trees play in "dispens[ing] their kindly never-ceasing moisture." Trees "imbibe a great quantity" of water, which, when released, "contribute[s] much to pools and streams" (147). The chopping down or "grubbing" of trees is prominent in Clare's enclosure poems, and, following White's lead, Clare shows that the removal of vegetation in "Lament" is linked to the desertification of the commons&#8212;the land itself, so torn up, is barely able to "bid a mouse to thrive" (154). Clare shows that more is at stake in "The Fallen Elm" than the loss of a single tree. Indeed, the idea of home can be expanded to include the entire Helpston parish, enclosed during the poet's twenties and finally made strange to him, a landscape "All levelled like a desert by the never-weary plough, / All banished like the sun where that cloud is passing now" ("Remembrances," lines 48-49).</p>
<p><b>II. The Elm's Betrayal and the Rhetoric of Freedom</b></p>
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<p>Whereas the first part of "The Fallen Elm" dwells elegiacally on the tree's strength, longevity, and domesticity, the second part is a denouncement of how it is "betrayed" by the men who cut it down (line 28); appropriately, the tone of the poem changes from gentle affection to righteous anger. The nature of the elm's betrayal is complex. The men who take shelter from the elements under the tree's limbs are the same ones who want to see it chopped down: after all, the tree's size and age (and hence its ability to protect) make it profitable lumber. This betrayal&#8212;so shocking for its ingratitude&#8212;is made possible by the enclosers' "cant" (line 35), a type of shifty language that employs the rhetoric of freedom to linguistically reverse ideas of right and wrong:</p>
<blockquote>Self-interest saw thee stand in freedom's ways,<br/>
So thy old shadow must a tyrant be;<br/>
Thou'st heard the knave abusing those in power,<br/>
Bawl freedom loud and then oppress the free;<br/>
Thou'st sheltered hypocrites in many a shower<br/>
That when in power would never shelter thee;<br/>
Thou'st heard the knave supply his canting powers<br/>
With wrong's illusions when he wanted friends,<br/>
That bawled for shelter when he lived in showers<br/>
And when clouds vanished made thy shade amends&#8212;<br/>
With axe at root he felled thee to the ground<br/>
And barked of freedom. O I hate the sound! (lines 39-50)</blockquote>
<p>Here, the rhetoric of freedom used by the proponents of enclosure turns Clare's elm into a "tyrant," and the shade that had previously been protective becomes a threat. Even as a bee might be seen as a thief of pollen, or a weed a thief of water and fertilizer, the elm is here reconfigured as a transgressor, one that stands in the way of more efficient agricultural production. Its boughs intercept the sunlight meant for crops; its roots hold together the soil that must be cut by the plough.</p>
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<p>The rhetoric of freedom "barked" by the enclosers (line 50) reconfigures Clare's elm, then, from a friendly "domestic tree" into a hindrance to economic progress. Clare's denunciation of the enclosers includes a strong critique of how language can be twisted to forward a repressive social agenda. "Freedom," in this case, is narrowly defined by "self-interest" and is closely tied to the rights of private (rather than communal) ownership. The tree's right to exist&#8212;and Clare's right to enjoy the tree's protection, as well as its fruit&#8212;is legally insignificant in the face of private property rights codified by parliamentary enclosure. However, Clare's poem demonstrates that this definition of freedom is in fact a kind of verbal legerdemain (based on "illusions") "bawled" by "hypocrites," "knave[s]," and "o'erbearing fools" (lines 46, 47, 43, 41, 55), who take advantage of an abstract word like "freedom" to pursue their exploitative agenda. The ancientness of the elm is contrasted to the short-term economic interests. A "disciple unto time" (line 48), the tree is a living reminder of the power of customary rights threatened by enclosure and the privatization of agricultural production. Clare reminds his reader that the elm's removal is symbolically linked to the destruction of the common lands and, by extension, the freedom of the rural poor to earn their customary subsistence livings. By exposing the enclosers "freedom" for what it really is, Clare shows that it is a "cant term of enslaving tools / To wrong another by the name of right" (lines 53-54).</p>
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<p>Tim Fulford argues that Clare's elm&#8212;like William Cowper's <a href="http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10439890&amp;wwwflag=&amp;imagepos=6">Yardley Oak</a>&#8212;is a powerful symbol of the English constitution: ancient, vital, and "capable of gradual change as a growth of English soil" (para. 1). As Cowper's "Yardley Oak" shows, such trees are powerfully evocative of English freedom&#8212;in contrast to perceived French despotism&#8212;and they are suggestive of English identity (and, for Cowper, personal identity as well). Located within a landscape itself pregnant with meaning, landmarks like Yardley Oak speak the "language of redemption," and Cowper mourns the "[d]estruction of rural beauty," a destruction that "threatens...selfhood." This loss is "not just of a place of security but of the very ground on which its ability to discover a language of redemption depends. To lose a familiar and therefore meaningful landscape is also to lose a saving language," a language emerging from natural forms and connected to freedom itself (para. 6). For Cowper, the destruction of landscape "becomes an exemplification that occurs when all linguistic sources of moral reparation have been destroyed" (para. 11). Fulford points out that Clare's "Fallen Elm" is a "narrative of imprisonment" (para. 15), in which the loss of the tree is a loss of a "selfmark" (para. 14)&#8212;a loss of the poet's connection to the land (and its national history) as well as his own personal identity. "Trapped in corrupted languages" (para. 15)&#8212;in the usurping, counterfeiting rhetoric of freedom and enclosure&#8212;Clare's is "a kind of poetry in which language is left on the point of breakdown and the poet at the end of madness rather than one of sublime egotism" (para. 16).</p>
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<p>While the tree itself is felled, the image of the tree&#8212;reconstructed in Clare's poem&#8212;continues to assert its power as a symbol of common rights. Appropriately, this power extends beyond human language to one more universal, a language linked to the natural world and not legalistic jargon or "cant." A friend to both the <a href="http://blx1.bto.org/birdfacts/results/bob12000.htm">mavis</a> and the poet, the elm "owned a language by which hearts are stirred / Deeper than by a feeling clothed in word" (lines 31-32). The music of the elm&#8212;the sound of strong winds as they blow through its limbs&#8212;overpowers even Clare's ability to describe it: This language is an "anthem" (line 2) to Clare&#8212;a song filled with significance and emotion. The "comforts" the tree provides "was never penned" (line 14), indicating that they can't be captured (or "clothed," or enclosed) in words but also, perhaps, that they are so widely known that they don't need to be. Like the English constitution itself, unwritten but nevertheless providing tangible benefits to all citizens, these comforts are to be enjoyed as rights: not as "clothes," or adornments, but positive, tangible facts. It is no mistake that Clare links these customary rights to music. A fiddler himself, Clare understood well the role of music at community gatherings, where folk songs&#8212;passed down through generations&#8212;underscored the vital continuity of local traditions, given freely as an inheritance, like the common lands themselves.</p>
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<p>Clare adeptly critiques the rhetoric of freedom in the second half of "The Fallen Elm," and he displays a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between language and power. In contrast to the "music-making elm," which speaks of comfort and freedom, the cant of the enclosers is brash and enslaving:</p>
<blockquote>Thus came enclosure&#8212;ruin was its guide<br/>
But freedom's clapping hands enjoyed the sight<br/>
Though comfort's cottage soon was thrust aside<br/>
And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.<br/>
E'en nature's dwellings far away from men&#8212;<br/>
The common heath&#8212;became the spoiler's prey.<br/>
. . .<br/>
No matter&#8212;wrong was right and right was wrong<br/>
And freedom's bawl was sanction to the song.<br/>
. . .<br/>
As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm<br/>
In freedom's name the little that is mine.<br/>
And there are knaves that brawl for better laws<br/>
And cant of tyranny in stronger powers<br/>
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws<br/>
And freedom's birthright from the weak devours.<br/>
(lines 57-62, 65-66, 69-74)</blockquote>
<p>While the elm "murmurs" comfort and reassurance, the enclosers offer only noise&#8212;they come with "clapping hands," and "bawl" for freedom. Clare is so effective here in evoking the din of the "bawl" accompanying these men that they seem to become little more than mouths (not unlike John Milton's "blind mouths" in "Lycidas"?)&#8212;"vile unsatiated maws."&#160; They literally eat up the "birthright" of the rural poor, "freedom," which is so closely linked to access to the commons. Such access was crucial, since the common lands were used for raising crops, grazing livestock, and foraging (nutritious foodstuffs, as well as herbs for folk medicines). With restricted access to such lands, Clare shows that his neighbors will literally eat less. The elm tree, the most visible guardian of these freedoms, is only an initial sacrifice.</p>
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<p>Once the tree has gone, the cottage must go next; in its place will come the workhouse, the erection of which will complete the disenfranchisement of the Helpston locals. Of the workhouse itself, little needs be said. In 1844, Friedrich Engels writes that "these workhouses, or as the people call them, Poor Law Bastilles, is such as to frighten away everyone who has the slightest prospect of life without this form of public charity." They are the "most repulsive residence which the refined ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent," not much different than a "jail," and perhaps worse (284). Clare's writings make similar comparisons between workhouses and the loss of freedom. A victim of enclosure, the personified wetland Swordy Well "speaks for all who have been forced 'onto the parish'" (Lucas 38) and into "Pride's workhouse" ("Lament" line 77). The "workhouse prisons" in "The Fallen Elm" replace the open fields where (in another poem) "unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene" ("The Moors" line 7). The image of the "domestic tree"&#8212;linked in the first half of Clare's poem to the comforts of home as well as the beneficence of nature&#8212;is displaced by an institutional dwelling place most undomestic, where husbands and wives could be separated from each other and, in some cases, children could be separated from parents. The cant of freedom, used by the enclosers in the second half of "The Fallen Elm" is instrumental, Clare asserts, in enslaving the poor. In demanding their right to own and use private property without restriction, these men overturn the inherited rights of the rural laboring class to common lands, which are "starving, exhausted and overworked" like the workers themselves (Sales 57).</p>
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<p>In the end, Clare's poem becomes a linguistic assertion denying the enclosers a complete victory: the elm figuratively remains. In class discussions, students might be asked what Clare is trying to suggest about the power of his poetry versus the rhetoric of freedom he denounces. It is intriguing that Clare emphasizes the binary oppositions such rhetoric seeks to deploy (as in George Orwell's <i>1984</i>): right becomes wrong, and wrong becomes right; freedom becomes slavery, and vice versa. The instructor who is not afraid of inviting controversy might push the issue to explore how contemporary world events&#8212;the economic politics of globalization, for instance&#8212;involve the manipulation of language to achieve unjust ends. What exactly is "free trade," and whom does it make more free? What is the relationship of free markets to the impoverishment of Third World nations? What comparisons can be drawn between the agricultural revolution in Clare's time and the "Green Revolution" of the 1960s and 1970s? While these questions might be a little open-ended, they enable students to make connections between Clare's own seemingly distant set of concerns and pressing issues of the contemporary moment.</p>
<p><b>Conclusion</b></p>
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<p>John Clare writes, "[A]ll my favourite places have met with misfortunes" (<i>By Himself</i> 41). These loved spots&#8212;known by the poet since boyhood&#8212;have incalculable value; their enclosure heralds the destruction of traditional ways of life and of community history and identity (not to mention individual personal identity). Home and self, Clare suggests, are one and the same thing; remove birds, weeds, and butterflies "from their homes / Each beautious thing a withered thought becomes, / Association fades and like a dream; / They are but shadows of the things they seem" (lines 147-150). The loss of the elm tree is a highly personal one to Clare; once venerable, it becomes expendable in the face of so-called progress. However, Clare's poem exposes the rhetoric of those who would chop down the elm tree as hollow cant. The freedom they claim to champion is in fact little more than outright theft, an appropriation of the land and language (and, therefore, a type of counterfeiting). Their "right" to chop down the elm tramples on the rights of the tree (which Clare asserts as legitimate), as well as the right of the poet's family to survive, since the tree provided protection and comfort to them. The destruction of the elm&#8212;and the enclosure of the Helpston landscape&#8212;thus becomes analogous to an attack on the laborers and denizens of the town, and the "freedom" of the wealthy landowners derives from the enslavement of the rural poor.</p>
<p><b>Postscript on the Rhetoric of Freedom</b></p>
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<p>Clare's denouncement of the rhetoric of freedom still has much relevance to the contemporary environmental movement, and "The Fallen Elm" is valuable in the classroom as a starting point to explore how language can be used to frame the debate between "developers," "conservationists," and "preservationists." The enclosers in Clare's poem "bawl" freedom in the service of agricultural "development," though Clare himself describes freedom in terms of preservation&#8212;keeping the common lands unenclosed and available for the rural poor to use. Clare's use of the term is bound up in several assumptions: that freedom is related to the land itself (not simply codified by written laws); that everyone has the right to access this land to earn a livelihood; that the privitization of land leads to social inequality, even slavery (here Clare follows Rousseau).</p>
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<li>The rhetoric of freedom is still important today in framing the debate about how public and private lands can be developed and utilized. In the 1980s and '90s, in the United States, proponents of the "wise use" movement employed the idea of "freedom" to combat perceived government over-regulation of economic development; along these same lines, "wise use" advocates attempted to portray environmental legislation (and environmentalists themselves!) as anti-democratic, even anti-American. To give but one example, the website Freedom.org provides a fascinating study in "wise use" ideology, rhetorically similar to the "cant" of Clare's enclosers (who equate privatization with freedom and common ownership with slavery). One news release promotes "Freedom Week" (beginning July 4th, 1998) and asserts that government regulation of public and private lands is "transforming America from the 'land of the free' to the home of the enslaved" ("Freedom Week Backgrounder"). In order to maintain freedom, this document asserts, the rights of private ownership must be strictly defended. Using terms every bit as confrontational as Clare's enclosers, the "Freedom Week" document refers to the "enemy" as those who hold values of "sustainability," which have "pushed aside the principles of personal responsibility and individual freedom." The idea that "[l]and, and the resources it contains, are assets held in common by all people" is "the enemy," as are "public policies such as the Endangered Species Act, [and] the Ecosystem Management policy." "Freedom Week," the document asserts, is a "coordinated strategic offensive" (a kind of ideological pre-emptive strike, one wonders?) to dismantle the concept of "sustainable development, or 'biodiversity enhancement'"&#8212;to assert the rights of private ownership, even when the broader public welfare is at risk.</li>
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<p><b>For Further Reading, see also:</b></p>
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<li>Jonathan Bate's <i>John Clare: A biography</i> (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), a well-researched and sensitive account of the poet's life.<br/>
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<li>"The Ecological Vision of John Clare" in James McKusick's <i>Green Writing</i> (St. Martins)<br/>
<br/></li>
<li><i>John Clare in Context</i> (Cambridge), a volume of Clare essays edited by Hugh Haughton, Adam Phillips, and Geoffrey Summerfield<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>The John Clare webpage, edited by Simon Kovesi, at &lt;<a href="http://www.johnclare.info/">www.johnclare.info</a>&gt;.<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>John Clare Society Webpage, at&lt;<a href="http://www.johnclare.org.uk/">www.johnclare.org.uk</a>&gt;<br/>
<br/></li>
<li>The John Clare weblog, at &lt;<a href="http://www.johnclare.blogspot.com/">www.johnclare.blogspot.com</a>&gt;</li>
</ul>
<h4 align="center">Works Cited</h4>
<p class="wc">Anderson, Kit. <i>Nature, Culture, &amp; Big Old Trees: Live Oaks and Ceibas in the Landscapes of Louisiana and Guatemala</i>. Austin: U of Texas P, 2003.</p>
<p class="wc">Bachelard, Gaston. <i>The Poetics of Space</i>. Boston: Beacon, 1968.</p>
<p class="wc">Bate, Jonathan. <i>The Song of the Earth</i>. Harvard: Harvard UP, 2000.</p>
<p class="wc">Barrell, John. <i>The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730-1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972.</p>
<p class="wc">Brownlow, Timothy. <i>John Clare and the Picturesque Landscape</i>. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983.</p>
<p class="wc">Clare, John. <i>"I Am," The Selected Poetry of John Clare</i>. Ed. Jonathan Bate. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.</p>
<p class="wc">---. <i>John Clare By Himself</i>. Ed. Eric Robinson and David Powell. New York: Routledge, 2002.</p>
<p class="wc">---. <i>The Letters of John Clare</i>. Ed. J. W. and Anne Tibble. London: Routledge, 1951.</p>
<p class="wc">Engels, Friedrich. <i>The Conditions of the Working Class in England</i>. New York: Viking Penguin, 1987.</p>
<p class="wc">"Freedom Week Backgrounder." 10 Oct. 2004. &lt;http://www.freedom.org/fweek&gt;.</p>
<p class="wc">Fulford, Tim. "Cowper, Wordsworth, Clare: The Politics of Trees." <i>The John Clare Society Journal</i> 14 (1995). &lt;http://human.ntu.uk/clare/fulford.html&gt;.</p>
<p class="wc">Goodridge, John and Kelsey Thornton. "John Clare: the Trespasser." <i>John Clare in Context</i>. Eds. Hugh Haughton, Adam Phillips, Geoffrey Summerfield. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.</p>
<p class="wc">Kirkby, M. "Nature as Refuge in Children's Environments." <i>Children's Environments Quarterly</i> 6 (1989): 1-12.</p>
<p class="wc">Lucas, John. <i>John Clare</i>. Plymouth: Northcote, 1994.</p>
<p class="wc">McKusick, James. <i>Green Writing</i>. New York: St. Martins, 2000.</p>
<p class="wc">Sales, Roger. <i>John Clare: A Literary Life</i>. New York: Palgrave, 2002.</p>
<p class="wc">Storey, Edward. <i>A Right to Song: The Life of John Clare</i>. London: Methuen, 1982.</p>
<p class="wc">White, Gilbert. <i>The Natural History of Selborne</i>. Ed. W. S. Scott. London: Folio Society, 1962.</p>
</div></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/index.html">Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/ziegenhagen-timothy">Ziegenhagen, Timothy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/668" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocriticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1307" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">natural history</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3449" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">enclosure</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/title/fallen-elm" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">&#039;The Fallen Elm&#039;</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/helpston" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Helpston</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3469" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Rhetoric of Freedom</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/edward-storey" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Edward Storey</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gilbert-white" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gilbert White</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/gaston-bachelard" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gaston Bachelard</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jonathan-bate-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jonathan Bate</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/margaret-grainger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Margaret Grainger</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/helpston" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Helpston</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/italy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Italy</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:46:07 +0000rc-admin22080 at http://www.rc.umd.eduSyllabus: Green Romanticismhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mazzeo/mazzeo_syllabus.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h3>Syllabus</h3>
<h4>Green Romanticism</h4>
<p>Tilar J. Mazzeo<br/>
Email &lt;tjmazzeo@colby.edu&gt;<br/>
English 342/Environmental Studies 342</p>
<p><i><b>Course Description:</b></i></p>
<p>The Romantics were known as the poets of nature&#8212;but what was at stake in their relationship to the environment? How did the ecological crises of late eighteenth-century Europe influence their works?&#160; How did Romantic poetry help to shape the history of Western environmentalism?&#160; In this course, we will study Romantic literature from the perspective of "eco-criticism." This means that we will be asking how the relationship between people and the landscape is imagined and how it is structured by institutions of class, economics, politics, gender, science, and law.</p>
<p><i><b>Required Texts:</b></i></p>
<p>Jean-Jacques Rousseau's <i>Reveries of a Solitary Walker<br/></i> Jane Austen's <i>Mansfield</i> <i>Park<br/></i> Course reading packet</p>
<p><i><b>Student Responsibilities:</b></i></p>
<table align="left" border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" width="95%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Discussion and Class Presentation:</td>
<td width="60">20%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Midterm examination (with take home essay portion):&#160;</td>
<td width="60">20%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Final examination (with take home essay portion):</td>
<td width="60">30%</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Response essays:&#160;</td>
<td width="60">30%</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><i><b>Anticipated Reading Schedule:</b></i></p>
<p><i><b>Week 1: Images of the Landscape in the Romantic Period</b></i></p>
<p>Introductory Course Lecture</p>
<p><b>William Blake's "The Clod and the Pebble"</b></p>
<p><b>William Blake's "And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times"</b></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><b><br/>
Week 2: Exploration and Environmental Impact</b></i>
<p><b>Samuel Taylor Coleridge's <i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i></b></p>
<p>Jim McKusick's "Coleridge and the Economy of Nature," <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 35 (1996): 375-392.</p>
<p>W. J. T. Mitchell's "The Imperial Landscape," ch. 1, <i>Landscape and Power</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002; second edition).</p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><br/>
<b>Week 3: Landscape Aesthetics and Human Subjectivity</b></i>
<p><b>Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Mont Blanc"</b></p>
<p>Jonathan Bate's "The Picturesque Environment," ch. 2, <i>The Song of the Earth</i> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000).</p>
<p>Andrew Ross' "The Ecology of Images," <i>Visual Culture: Images and Interpretations</i>, ed. Norman Byrson, <i>et al</i>. (Hanover: University of New England Press, 1994).</p>
<p><b>Edmund Burke's "Enquiry into the Origins...of the Sublime and Beautiful" (selection)</b></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><br/>
<b>Week 4: Landscape Painting and the Poets</b></i>
<p><b>William Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle"</b></p>
<p><strong><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mazzeo/MazzeoPics.html">Landscape Painting</a>:</strong></p>
<p><b>George Beaumont, "Peele Castle"</b> (painting) (available in <a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mazzeo/MazzeoPics.html">Landscape Painting</a>)</p>
<p>Paintings by <b>Claude Lorrain (<i>Landscape with Dancing Figures</i>), Caspar David Friedrich (<i>Cloister Cemetery in the Snow, Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon,</i> and <i>Wanderer above a Sea of Fog</i>), J.M.W. Turner (<i>Slavers throwing over the dead and dying</i>), John Constable (<i>View of Dedham</i>)</b> (available in <a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mazzeo/MazzeoPics.html">Landscape Painting</a>)</p>
<p>Luke Herrmann's <i>British Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century</i> (introduction) (London: Faber and Faber, 1973).</p>
<p><b>Ron Broglio's "The Picturesque and the Kodak Moment"</b> &lt;http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/contemporary/broglio/broglio.html&gt;</p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><br/>
<b>Week 5: Biology and the Natural World</b></i>
<p><b>Percy Shelley's "The Sensitive Plant"</b></p>
<p><b>Erasmus Darwin's <i>The Botantic Garden</i> (selection)</b></p>
<p style="margin-right: -0.5in;">Robert Maniquis's "The Puzzling Mimosa: Sensitivity and Plant Symbols in Romanticism," <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 8:3 (Spring 1969): 129-155.</p>
<p>Onno Oerlemans's <i>Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature</i> (introduction) (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2003).</p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><br/>
<b>Week 6: Vegetables and Meat: The Politics of Production</b></i>
<p><b>Percy Shelley's "A Vindication of Natural Diet"</b></p>
<p>Timothy Morton's "'The purer nutriment': Diet and Shelley's Biographies," ch. 2, <i>Shelley and the Revolution in Taste</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).</p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<i><br/>
<b>Week 7:&#160; Pantheism and Natural Religion</b></i>
<p><b>Percy Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"</b></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><b>William Wordsworth's "The world is too much with us"</b></p>
<p class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;"><b>William Blake's "There is no natural religion"</b> <span style="color: black;"><br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/cgi-bin/nph-dweb/blake/Illuminated-Book/NNR/@Generic__CollectionView;cv=java">http://www.blakearchive.org/cgi-bin/nph-dweb/blake/<br/>
Illuminated-Book/NNR/@Generic__CollectionView;cv=java</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Tanya Luhrmann's "The Resurgence of Romanticism: Contemporary Neopaganism, Feminism, and the Divinity of Nature," <i>Anthropology and Environmentalism</i>, Ed. K. Milton. New York: Routledge, 1993.</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 8:&#160; Weather, Climate, and Environmental Catastrophe</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Samuel Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>John Keats' "To Autumn"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Lord Byron's "Darkness"</b><br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/bydark.htm">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/bydark.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Jonathan Bate's "Living with the Weather," <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 35:3 (Fall 1996): 431.</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 9: Environmental Apocalypse and the Last Man</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Thomas Beddoes' "The Last Man"</b><br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/beddoes.htm">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/beddoes.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Thomas Campbell's "The Last Man"<br/></b> &lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/campb.htm">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/campb.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Thomas Hood, "The Last Man"</b><br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/hood.htm">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/hood.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Laurence Buell's "Environmental Apocalypticism" (ch. 9), <i>Environmental Imagination</i> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Morton Paley's "Mary Shelley's <i>The Last Man</i>: Apocalypse without Millennium,"</b><b><br/></b> &lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/paley.htm">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/paley.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Mary Shelley's <i>The Last Man</i> (selections),</b><br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/index.html">http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/mws/lastman/index.html</a>&gt;</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 10: Romantic Gardens and Horticulture</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>John Clare's "To a Fallen Elm"</b> and autobiography</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>William Wordsworth's "Yew Trees"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Tim Fulford's "Cowper, Wordsworth, Clare: The Politics of Trees," <i>The John Clare Society Journal</i> 14 (1995): 47-59.</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 11: Tourism, Population, and the British Rural Poor</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;">*Start reading Austen's <i>Mansfield Park,</i> due for next week*</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Dorothy Wordsworth's <i>Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland</i> (selection)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">George Dyer's "The Complaints of the Poor People of England"</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Joseph Huck's <i>A Pedestrian Tour through Wales</i> (selection)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Thomas Malthus' "Essay on the Principles of Population" (selection)</b></span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 12: Romantic Gardens, with an emphasis on gender questions</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;">Jane Austen's <i>Mansfield Park</i></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Garden designs by <b>Humphrey Repton, Capability Brown, and Alexander Pope<br/></b> &lt;<a href="http://www.georgianindex.net/garden/Gardens.html">http://www.georgianindex.net/garden/Gardens.html</a>&gt;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Horace Walpole's <i>History of the Modern Taste in Gardening</i></b> (selection, the "Ha-Ha")<br/>
&lt;<a href="http://www.gardenvisit.com/t/w9.htm">http://www.gardenvisit.com/t/w9.htm</a>&gt;</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 13: Rousseau and the Republican Landscape</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>William Wordsworth's <i>The Prelude</i></b> (selections, book six)&#160;</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Jean-Jacques Rousseau's <i>Reveries of a Solitary Walker</i></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Kenneth Olwig's <i>Landscape, Nature, and the Body Politic</i> (selection) (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002)</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 14: "Hardly Hedgerows": Parks, Landscape Enclosure, and Class</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Wordsworth's "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Marjorie Levinson's "Insight and Oversight: Reading 'Tintern Abbey'," <i>Wordsworth's Great Period Poems</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Nicholas Roe's <i>The Politics of Nature</i> (selection) (London: Palgrave, 1992)</span></p>
<hr noshade="noshade" size="1"/>
<span style="color: black;"><i><br/>
<b>Week 15: Redemptive Landscapes</b></i></span>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Lord Byron's "Apostrophe to Ocean"</b> (<i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i>, canto four)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>Samuel Coleridge's "This Lime Tree Bower, My Prison"</b></span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;"><b>John Keats's "The Vale of Soul-Making"</b> (<i>Letters</i>)</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Ralph Pite's "How Green Were the Romantics?" <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 35 (1996): 367-73.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: black;">Lowy and Sayre's <i>Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity</i> (selection) (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.</span></p></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/index.html">Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/mazzeo-tilar-j">Mazzeo, Tilar J.</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3601" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabi</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3600" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabus</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-blake" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Blake</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jane-austen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jane Austen</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/percy-bysshe-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jean-jacques-rousseau" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jonathan-bate-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jonathan Bate</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/reading" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Reading</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/chicago" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Chicago</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-region-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/region/new-england" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new England</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/europe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Europe</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-naturalfeature-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NaturalFeature:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/natural-feature/sea-of-fog" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sea of Fog</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-syllabi-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Syllabi Categories:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/syllabi-categories/ecology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ecology</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:43:14 +0000rc-admin22065 at http://www.rc.umd.eduRomanticism, Ecology and Pedagogyhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/index.html
<div class="field field-name-field-index-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-index-banner" src="http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/files/styles/index_banner/public/indexbanner_0.jpg?itok=JY7MHouq" width="640" height="213" alt="Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy" title="Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div id="IndexContent">
<h2 class="TOC">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul id="TOCContent">
<div class="LargeObject">I. Introduction</div>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mckusickkeegan/mckusickkeegan.html">Learning to Love the Fens: An Introduction to <i>Romanticism, Ecology, and Pedagogy</i></a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Bridget Keegan and James C. McKusick</li>
<div class="LargeObject">II. Romantic Ecology in the Classroom</div>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/harrison/harrison.html">Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Gary Harrison</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/wein/wein.html">Romanticism and the Sense of Place</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Toni Wein</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/mazzeo/mazzeo.html">Teaching Green Romanticism to Environmental Studies Majors</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Tilar Mazzeo</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hothem/hothem.html">Surveying the Literary Landscape: The Romantic Anthology as Environment</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Thomas Hothem</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/hess.html">Three "Natures": Teaching Romantic Ecology in the Poetry of William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John Clare</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Scott Hess</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/ziegenhagen/ziegenhagen.html">John Clare's "Domestic Tree": Freedom and Home in the "The Fallen Elm"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Timothy Ziegenhagen</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/stroup/stroup.html">Reading the Field Marks of Poetry</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">William Stroup</li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/brownlow/brownlow.html">Only Connect</li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Timothy Brownlow</li>
<div class="LargeObject">III. <a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/teachmattoc.html">Teaching Materials</a></div>
<div class="LargeObject">IV. <a href="/pedagogies/commons/cfp.html">Call for Future Papers</a></div>
</ul>
</div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/index.html">Romantic Pedagogy Commons</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-edited-by field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Edited By:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/mckusick-james-c">McKusick, James C.</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/person/keegan-bridget">Keegan, Bridget</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/668" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocriticism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/757" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">pedagogy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1472" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">teaching</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/lawrence-buell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lawrence Buell</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/james-engell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">James Engell</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/anthony-dangerfield" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Anthony Dangerfield</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3442" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nature writing</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3443" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environmentalism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3444" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environmental ethics</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3445" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecosystems</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3446" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fens</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3447" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">wetlands</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3448" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">swamps</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3449" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">enclosure</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3450" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">agribusiness</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3451" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New Orleans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3452" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Hurricane Katrina</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:42:49 +0000rc-admin22061 at http://www.rc.umd.eduThree "Natures": Teaching Romantic Ecology in the Poetry of William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John Clarehttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/hess.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><h2>Three "Natures": Teaching Romantic Ecology in the Poetry of William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John Clare</h2>
<h4>Scott Hess, Earlham College</h4>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade"/>
<div class="Section2">
<ol>
<li>
<p>One of the first things I try to teach my students, in any discussion of literature and environment (Romantic or otherwise), is that "nature" cannot simply be taken for granted.&#160; That is, there is no monolithic, clearly defined entity, "nature," to which we can appeal. Instead, as William Cronon puts it in <i>Uncommon Ground</i>, "nature is a human idea, with a long and complicated cultural history which has led different human beings to conceive of the natural world in very different ways," depending on their varying social and cultural backgrounds (20). With this understanding, as Cronon goes on to say, "it is not nearly enough to assert that something is &#8216;natural' and assume that this will end all discussion of what is to be done" (21). What counts for us as "nature," with all the rich connotation and emotional power that the term can carry, depends very much on our own social positioning.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I like to introduce this issue to students at the start of environment-related discussion because it is novel and challenging for many of them. Students often assume that "nature" is by definition independent of human meanings and values, and thus tend to project their own meanings and values all the more profusely and uncritically onto the term. Establishing that "nature" means different things to different people, and that our own meanings are not as self-evident as they sometimes seem, greatly increases a classroom's capacity for critical thinking and productive discussion. At the same time, establishing this connection between different models of nature and different social and discursive positions provides a powerful method for reading literary texts in relation to environment.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My favorite theoretical text on this topic, which I usually ask students to read right at the start of the semester, is Raymond Williams's wonderfully provocative and readable essay, "Ideas of Nature," in <i>Problems in Materialism and Culture.</i> This essay not only introduces the relationship between ideas of nature, self, and society, but also condenses an overview of the entire history of Euro-American ideas of nature into a concise nineteen pages. Williams's essay is both readily accessible (on some levels) and deeply challenging and provocative (on others)&#8212;I have read it ten times or more, and still find it offers me new perspective and insights with each rereading. The essay insists that we understand our relation to "nature" holistically, in terms of our larger social and economic situation; or as Williams puts it, "what is being argued, it seems to me, in the idea of nature is the idea of man; and this not only generally, or in ultimate ways, but the idea of men in society, indeed the ideas of kinds of societies" (70-71). In short, how we imagine nature always informs how we imagine ourselves, both as individuals and in our social relationships.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Even before I expose my students to Williams's essay, though, I like to give them an example of two very different versions of the same "nature" in literary texts, to let them experience just how differently the same environment can be represented. For this purpose, on the first day of class, before students have even read a single page or had any theoretical or other orientation, I often give them William Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" and Dorothy Wordsworth's description of the same scene in her journal, side by side. After briefly explaining the relationship between the two texts&#8212;William's composition of the poem two years or more after their shared experience, using Dorothy's journal to stimulate his memory and imagination&#8212;I ask students to compare their representations of environment. After we have established a general comparison, I then ask students to describe and compare the overall versions of nature expressed by the two texts. Finally, after I provide still more background information about the two writers, we discuss how William and Dorothy's social positioning and their representations of environment might be related.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>By the time we have done all this and I have said a few words about the syllabus and the first assignment (which is often to read Williams's essay), the opening class is usually over. If the discussion goes quickly, however, and I have a particularly eager and brilliant group of students, I will sometimes ask them to look at a third poem, by John Clare, to give them yet another social position and version of "nature."&#160; More often, I turn to a Clare poem in the following class, in conjunction with our discussion of the Williams essay. One could use other texts by other Romantic writers to discuss varying representations of environment, of course, but I have found that these three writers provide an especially provocative range of techniques and social positioning that gives a broad frame of reference for discussing other Romantic texts. William Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" offers a short, memorable text in the male canonical Romanticism of the imagination, while Dorothy Wordsworth and John Clare's texts provide different alternative traditions associated with female and laboring class writing. None of these texts need to be presented as paradigmatic for an entire, coherent tradition&#8212;a position most scholars would likely contest, or at least heavily qualify&#8212;but they do present a broad range of social positions and environmental representations. This range alerts students right away that we will not be dealing with a single Romantic ecology, but with multiple Romantic <i>ecologies</i>, all with their own structures and significances.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>This essay focuses primarily on that first comparative exercise in order to demonstrate a teaching methodology for environment-related texts in the period, but I have included links also to versions of syllabi I use in teaching Romanticism with an environmental emphasis: one version exclusively <a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355.html">British</a>, and one which combines <a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355b.html">British and American</a>. In keeping with my preferred critical approach, these classes do not attempt to focus on environment exclusively, but in relation to other specific social themes: class and identity in the former example, gender in the latter. Because representations of nature are closely implicated in social positions, I have found that teaching Romantic ecology demands teaching these positions also. Given my interests, I like to build my Romantic period survey around the intersection of environment and one or more such significant issues (which might also include race, colonialism, or Revolution/politics).</p>
<p align="left"><b>I. Two Versions of the Same Environment: William and Dorothy Wordsworth</b></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I'll begin with the texts I set side by side for students in this first classroom exercise (note that I usually use the three-stanza version of "I wandered lonely as a cloud," initially published in 1807, rather than the longer version of 1815 and subsequent editions, because it presents a similar position in condensed form; one could just as easily use the longer version).</p>
William Wordsworth, text from 1807 <i>Poems, in Two Volumes</i> [untitled]:
<blockquote>I wandered lonely as a Cloud<br/>
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,<br/>
When all at once I saw a crowd<br/>
A host of dancing daffodils;<br/>
Along the Lake, beneath the trees,<br/>
Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.<br/>
<br/>
The waves beside them danced, but they<br/>
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:&#8212;<br/>
A Poet could not but be gay<br/>
In such a laughing company:<br/>
I gaz'd&#8212;and gaz'd&#8212;but little thought<br/>
What wealth the show to me had brought:<br/>
<br/>
For oft when on my couch I lie<br/>
In vacant or in pensive mood,<br/>
They flash upon that inward eye<br/>
Which is the bliss of solitude,<br/>
And then my heart with pleasure fills,<br/>
And dances with the Daffodils.</blockquote>
<p>Dorothy Wordsworth, from <i>Grasmere Journal</i>, 15 April, 1802:</p>
<blockquote>It was a threatening, misty morning, but mild. We set off after dinner from Eusemere. Mrs. Clarkson went a short way with us, but turned back. The wind was furious, and we thought we must have returned. We first rested in the large boat-house, then under a furze bush opposite Mr. Clarkson's. Saw the plough going in the field. The wind seized our breath. The Lake was rough. There was a boat by itself floating in the middle of the bay below Water Millock. We rested again in the Water Millock Lane. The hawthorns are black and green, the birches here and there greenish, but there is yet more of purple to be seen on the twigs. We got over into a field to avoid some cows&#8212;people working. A few primroses by the roadside&#8212;woodsorrel flower, the anemone, scentless violets, strawberries, and that starry, yellow flower which Mrs. C. calls pile wort. When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow Park we saw a few daffodils close to the water-side. We fancied that the lake had floated the seeds ashore, and that the little colony had so sprung up. But as we went along there were more and yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They grew among the mossy stones about and about them; some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness; and the rest tossed and reeled and danced, and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, that blew upon them over the lake; they looked so gay, ever glancing, ever changing. This wind blew directly over the lake to them. There was here and there a little knot, and a few stragglers a few yards higher up; but they were so few as not to disturb the simplicity, unity, and life of that one busy highway. We rested again and again. The bays were stormy, and we heard the waves at different distances, and in the middle of the water, like the sea.&#160; Rain came
on&#8212;we were wet when we reached Luff's, but we called in. Luckily all was chearless [sic] and gloomy, so we faced the storm&#8212;we <i>must</i> have been wet if we had waited&#8212;put on dry clothes at Dobson's. I was very kindly treated by a young woman, the landlady looked sour, but it is her way. She gave us a goodish supper, excellent ham and potatoes. We paid 7/- when we came away.&#160;William was sitting by a bright fire when I came downstairs. He soon made his way to the library, piled up in a corner of the window. He brought out a volume of Enfield's <i>Speaker</i>, another miscellany, and an odd volume of Congreve's plays. We had a glass of warm rum and water. We enjoyed ourselves, and wished for Mary [Hutchinson, whom William married that October]. It rained and blew, when we went to bed. N.B. Deer in Gowbarrow Park like skeletons.</blockquote>
<p>Although the description of the daffodils takes only a portion of Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry, I deliberately give students the entire entry so that they can access the fuller context in which the description is embedded. One point that inevitably comes up during the discussion, in this respect, is the issue of form&#8212;the difference between an essentially private or semi-private journal entry and a lyric poem published for a largely unknown, mass print audience. The two descriptions of the daffodils are structured as much by form and audience expectation as by social positioning or sensibility. By providing a different version of the experience, however, the journal entry can indicate much that William did not include in writing his poem: the other people present and working in the landscape; social contacts before and after seeing the daffodils; the process of walking and repeated experience of resting; the kind and cost of dinner; the snug evening of reading in the inn afterwards; and, of course, the presence of William's sister, Dorothy, effaced in the poem's presentation of extreme individual isolation and even "loneliness."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I should say a word here, also, about pedagogical method. I teach at Earlham College, a small liberal arts college in Richmond, Indiana, adjoining the Ohio border in the east-central part of the state, which draws students from across the United States, together with a substantial number of international students. Classes at Earlham are quite small&#8212;the average for an upper level English class, such as my Romanticism class, is about 10-12, and rarely does any class exceed 25.&#160; Also, there is a strong culture of liberal arts, discussion-based education at Earlham. Students are used to sitting in a circle in all their humanities classes, and are generally expected to help shape the discussion as an active, group exploration of the material. On the whole, the students are wonderfully engaged and quite insightful&#8212;although, inevitably, some students more so than others, and all of them (like me) have their off days and their off semesters.&#160; Because of the school's Quaker traditions, students are also used to silence, so I can let my questions hang in the air for much longer than I could with the same group of students at a different institution.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My approach to teaching is very much determined by these contexts. I am used to presenting texts, setting up an issue or question, and letting discussion develop from there based on the students' own interests and initiative. I intervene with follow-up questions when discussion slackens or to direct attention to particular issues I feel we ought to address, if the students do not raise them on their own. As a result of this method, I tend to let discussions take their own shape within certain general parameters, rather than moving through a pre-determined checklist of points, and I can never predict the exact direction discussion will take or order in which issues will come up. I can't, therefore, present such a plan in the current essay. What I will try to present, though, are the kinds of issues which often do arise, and which I will sometimes prompt students to notice, at appropriate times, if they don't seem likely to emerge organically from the discussion. Different classroom cultures, I realize, will require different teaching strategies, but I trust that what follows will provide raw material for any teacher or professor to adapt to his or her particular classroom format and needs.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>One of the first things students tend to notice in comparing the two texts is the difference between William Wordsworth's presentation of a solitary experience and Dorothy's record of shared experience. Characteristic of William's poetry generally, this poem begins with the word "I" and uses the word repeatedly, never using the third-person "we."&#160; Dorothy's journal entry, in contrast, characteristically uses the word "I" sparingly, far less than the communal "we."&#160; William's poem, in fact, removes all social context, even the company of his sister, to present the experience of the daffodils as a radically solitary and decontextualized one. Its narrator encounters the daffodils in an unspecified location, after a detached and "lonely" wandering that separates him from any specific set of social relations. The simile of the narrator as cloud indicates this sense of distance and detachment from the landscape, presenting the poet as literally floating free from his environment. The poem's final stanza then recreates this lonely detachment indoors, as the poet dramatically recollects the daffodils in "vacant or in pensive mood," transformed by memory into "the bliss of solitude."&#160; Even indoors, the narrator remains separated from any specific social context or relationship. So why, the first question arises, would William want to remove his sister and present a self isolated from all social contexts before, during, and after the experience? And how does this emphasis on the separateness of the self connect with the representation of the natural scene in the poem?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Once these issues are raised, students will often call attention to the communal metaphors within Dorothy's description of the daffodils and the social contexts within which her description is set. Dorothy presents the flowers as a "unity," or image of community, not disrupted by the fact that a few "stragglers"&#160; have separated from the common body (the term "straggler" suggests a positive communal norm).&#160; Yet Dorothy does not present the daffodils only as a single unified body or abstraction. Instead, she describes different individual behaviors within the group: some daffodils resting heads on stones as if on pillows, some straggling, others tossing and reeling and dancing and laughing in the wind.&#160; The daffodils are part of a community but recognized also as distinctly individual.</p>
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<p>In contrast, William describes the daffodils always as a single monolithic body, without individual distinction: "ten thousand," "a crowd," "a host," "a laughing company."&#160; There is no sense of individuation here, only a collective "they."&#160; What purpose, I ask students, do these different characterizations of the daffodils serve? In William's poem, the collective "they" of the daffodils is represented primarily in relation to the isolated "I" of the narrator who describes them. Though they "outdo" the waves in glee and stand "along the lake, beneath the trees," the daffodils aren't defined in direct relationship to these other elements of the environment, but only as part of a scene composed from the unifying perspective of the central narrator. William's description, from this detached panoramic viewpoint above the landscape, has nothing like Dorothy's description of the daffodils resting their heads on the stones and laughing "with" the wind that blows "to" them, creating a sense of agency and relationship between the various elements in the scene. Although she projects her own emotions onto the daffodils in her valorization of their community, Dorothy does not make their significance depend on the central presence of the observer, as if the unity and beauty of the daffodils existed already before she arrived. Dorothy's journal entry presents her as merely another participant in a scene which already has its own relationships and values independent of her. William's daffodils, in contrast, are made to depend on the speaker and his overall composition of the scene. The narrators' positioning also indicates these differences: Dorothy situates herself among the daffodils, while William separates himself at an elevated distance.</p>
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<p>Val Plumwood theorizes the processes of homogenization and separation evident in "I wandered lonely as a cloud," in her discussion of the philosophical structures of dualism in chapter 2 of <i>Feminism and the Mastery of Nature</i>. Dominant groups, she argues, tend to use the marginalized and supposedly inferior other to define their own identity, while at the same time stressing their radical separation from this other. Such groups tend to homogenize the subordinate others into a single monolithic category of identity, eliding differences and individuality within the other. Humans, for instance, impose the single homogenous category "nature" on a vast range of various beings and environmental features, eliding in that single term the complex networks of interactions and relationships among these entities. Humans often define their identity in relation to "nature" while at the same time claiming to be radically separate and superior to it. This same structure of homogenization and separation applies between dominant and oppressed human groups, as when men construct their identity in relation to the homogenized and essentialized category of "woman," or white Europeans or Americans construct their identity in relation to blacks, "Orientals," or "savages."&#160; For Plumwood, human relationships to environment are thus structured in the same way as human social relationships, often through overlapping and mutually reinforcing networks of oppression.</p>
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<p>In Plumwood's terms, William Wordsworth constructs a hierarchical, dualistic relationship to the daffodils in his poem, while Dorothy Wordsworth in her journal entry constructs a non-hierarchical and relational model of difference. Even as he defines himself through his relation to the daffodils, the narrator of the poem stresses his superiority and radical separation from them, in terms of elevation, detachment, and mobility, including his ability to internalize and carry them within his memory. Dorothy, in contrast, even as she emphasizes the strong communal association of the daffodils, seems to recognize the differences between individual flowers and the complex networks of relationship within which they exist&#8212;both within the group and with other elements of their environment, such as the wind and the lake.</p>
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<p>William Wordsworth's poem presents the daffodils in order to emphasize the autonomy and separation of the self, making that self the imaginative focal point for the production of unity and value in the scene. In order to do so, he also removes Dorothy's presence and alternate subjectivity entirely. Dorothy, in contrast, presents herself in relation to the daffodils both as an individual and as part of a collective "we" which also includes her brother. At the same time, she situates her identity in relation to a larger social community in her references to the Clarksons and "Mrs. C."&#160;&#160; She extends this inclusive sense of community to the daffodils as well, emphasizing her similarity to them rather than her difference. The daffodils seem to experience the same joyful immersion and companionship in their environment that Dorothy records in her journal; and they rest out of "weariness," just as she describes herself and her brother resting "again and again."</p>
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<p>I want to emphasize that it is not just a matter of Dorothy observing the daffodils more closely or taking a more "objective" relation to the scene, as critics have argued, though both points are true enough in their way. Dorothy infuses the daffodils with her own meanings and values, just as William does; it's just that those meanings and values are different, constructing a communal, relational and participatory version of environment rather than an environment focused exclusively on the isolated human self. Another way to put it is that Dorothy's relational sense of identity, expressed throughout her journal, finds a metaphor in her perception of the community of daffodils, while William uses the daffodils instead as a metaphor for his models of creative imagination and solitary individualism. It's not a matter of one being truer to nature than the other, but of radically different modes of perceiving, organizing, and understanding the non-human environment. From this perspective, there is no single pre-given "nature" to relate to and represent, but radically different versions of "nature" depending on how we relate to and represent it. Pointing out that both William and Dorothy project aspects of themselves onto the daffodils and asking the class to explore the different effects of these projections is a good way to introduce this more general point about "nature."</p>
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<p>Students may also notice differences in the narrators' perspectives and physical positioning in the two versions of the scene. Dorothy records the experience of moving through the landscape, encountering the daffodils at ground level. William, in contrast, presents an elevated perspective that separates him physically and imaginatively from the daffodils, just as he separates himself from them rhetorically. The opening lines establish this elevated position, as he compares his wandering to a "lonely" cloud, floating without connection above the landscape. Then he sees the daffodils, not gradually but "all at once" in a single panoramic spectacle. From this elevated position, William presents his relation to the scene as entirely visual&#8212;he "saw," and "gazed and gazed"&#8212;never acknowledging any other aspect of his embodiment, as if he is all eyeball.&#160;Although Dorothy's journal entry also describes the daffodils in primarily visual terms, she includes the feeling of the wind and a much more dynamic sensual and kinetic engagement with her environment. Instead of flashing upon the view all at once in a single panoramic spectacle, the daffodils in her journal entry emerge as a gradually developing experience, as the walkers encounter first a few and then the main body of flowers. The poem presents the scene in ways analogous to a landscape painting, in exclusively visual terms seen from the outside. The journal, alternatively, is more like an interactive art installation, bringing the reader into a continuously unfolding, ambient experience that involves a full range of embodied responses.</p>
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<p>The forms and styles of the texts also reflect these differences. Dorothy Wordsworth's prose moves fluidly between various images, emotions, and metaphors, while William's verse uses punctuation, syntax, and stanza breaks repeatedly to frame the scene and separate observer and landscape: the semicolon after the forth line, the first stanza break, the colon and dash after the eighth line, the colon after the tenth line, and finally the stanza break after the twelfth line that separates the present scene from its later remembrance. The poem progresses in this way in tightly compartmentalized, two-line formal units, creating a sense of formal separation between viewer and scene, as well as a sense of separation between immediate perception and later acts of memory and imagination.&#160; Dorothy's description, on the other hand, spills dynamically from initial description to feeling ("I never saw daffodils so beautiful") to metaphor and then back to the physical activity of the observers, who, during and after the experience, "rested again and again."&#160; This phrase alone presents a fully embodied experience almost entirely elided from William's poem.</p>
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<p>Students may need to be prodded to attend to these issues of form, but as a teacher I can often introduce such issues in ways that complement and build on points students have already made. I also ask students to attend to the way Dorothy's journal entry acknowledges the various kinds of human labor going on in and shaping the landscape, as opposed to the absence of labor or any other shaping human presence in William's poem. Even Dorothy's mention of Mrs. C.'s name for the pile wort, a seemingly insignificant detail, recognizes how other people shape her perception of her environment, while William's poem claims complete autonomy to define the landscape and his identity in relation to it, independent from all other human influence. Dorothy is also much more specific and detailed in her descriptions than William, here as throughout their writing. I also like to point out to students that William's description of the non-human environment in this famous "nature poem" in fact really occupies only four lines&#8212;from lines five to eight&#8212;framed in multiple layers of the poet's own separate observation and mental processing. This difference in emphasis dramatizes how much more the poem is concerned with the self and its mental processes than with the physical environment for its own sake, as is true in almost all Wordsworth's environment-related poetry. By abstracting the landscape and describing it in broad strokes, he can much more easily appropriate it for the construction of his own autonomous identity.</p>
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<p>I also ask students why the final stanza of the poem creates a physical and temporal break, unfolding the full significance of the scene only in the future, as the poet lies indoors on his "couch [. . .] in vacant or in pensive mood." Why doesn't the narrator recognize the "wealth" the scene brings to him in the moment? Why does his heart only fill with pleasure and dance with the daffodils afterwards, when he has separated himself from them and from the rest of their environment in both space and time? Though he claims that he is joyful "in" the flowers' "laughing company" earlier in the poem, the entire structure and presentation of the experience belies this sense of immediate immersion in the scene, and the poet's imagination only fully participates in the scene after he has separated himself from it and internalized it in his memory. His heart can only dance with the daffodils when he has established a secure distance to keep him separate from them. Why, I ask students, does the poem end indoors? Why describe the process of viewing the scene as one of accumulating "wealth," from a "show?"&#160; Why does the narrator describe himself as first "pensive" and "vacant," before the daffodils flash on his memory and bring the "bliss of solitude?"</p>
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<p>These are often hard questions for students, but such questions get them thinking&#8212;and more specifically, thinking in terms of very close reading right at the start of the semester, in a way that intense scrutiny of a short poem encourages. Such questions also allow me to introduce William Wordsworth's position as a poet in relation to his reading audience, another social context that informs his overall representation of "nature."&#160; As a publishing writer, Wordsworth does literally accumulate "wealth" (albeit not very much or very quickly) by turning his experience into poetry for readers to buy. The daffodils flashing on the narrator's memory, in this sense, may also evoke the process of composition, as he sits down years later with Dorothy's journal to help him compose&#8212;yet another aspect of human influence elided from the poem. At the same time, the narrator's final indoors relationship to nature presents the experience of most of William Wordsworth's readers, offering a model for how he might hope his readers will relate to the poem as the experience of the daffodils bursts, second-hand, on their consciousness as well through the activity of reading.&#160; Just as the memory of the daffodils, separated in time and space from their original environment, enlivens the narrator in times of loneliness and vacancy, so too the poem enlivens the solitary vacancy of the reader, whose individual heart is also invited to fill with pleasure and dance with the imagined daffodils from the secure distance of reading. The poem thus brings the daffodils both literally and figuratively indoors&#8212;into the text for solitary indoor reading, and into the mind for solitary individual imagination.</p>
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<p>If I try to put these points together into a single coherent reading, I might argue that the poem converts the daffodils into the equivalent of imaginative aesthetic capital, for the individual production of meaning and value. Already separated from social contexts in the staging of the initial encounter, the daffodils are further separated from their natural environment when they are internalized in memory and imagination in the concluding stanza. The poet's protracted gaze converts the daffodils into both literal and symbolic "wealth"&#160; (line 12), accumulating a kind of portable imaginative capital for the production of future meaning and identity which it then transfers second-hand to the reader.&#160; Internalizing the daffodils in this form allows a vicarious participation in "nature," through private reading and imagination, which at the same time separates the self from both the human social and non-human natural environment. The daffodils become generalized symbols of "nature," affirming the autonomy of the self and converting its potential "vacancy" into the "bliss of solitude."&#160; The poem's version of environment, in short, authorizes a society of individual bourgeois writers and readers, claiming autonomy from one another while at the same time producing their identities and social relationships through this shared symbolic internalization of nature, apart from any specific local environment. Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry, in contrast, supports a relational model of identity, produced through immersion in a specific environment and complex overlapping networks of human and non-human relationship&#8212;an identity which cannot easily be abstracted from its contexts.</p>
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<p>By the time I get this far, my students' obvious conclusion is that English professors read too much into things. In practice, I wouldn't advise laying out this full position&#8212;or a comparable full reading of your own&#8212;for undergraduates in the first class of the semester, unless you have a very talented group of students indeed. By asking students to compare the two versions of the scene and the versions of nature, identity, and social relations that they support, however, you can introduce your class to a relatively sophisticated model of reading environment in literary texts and a useful&#160; framework for the study of Romantic ecologies.</p>
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<p>At some point in the discussion, I also like to comment on the difference between William's position as a male poet, appealing to "nature" in part to support his poetic authority in relation to a potentially indifferent or scornful public, and Dorothy's more domestic position as a woman in the Wordsworth household, pointedly eschewing public authorship. I ask students to consider how these different social and gender positions might be reflected in the different presentations of the daffodils. As Anne Mellor and other feminist scholars have argued, Dorothy's relational self and greater attention to the physical details of her environment identify her with a larger tradition of female Romantic writers, as opposed to many male Romantic poets' attempts to transcend or imaginatively master their environment.</p>
<p align="left"><b>II. John Clare and the Aesthetics of Engagement</b></p>
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<p>After this first comparative reading, I find it helpful to introduce students to another short text by a different Romantic-era author, to offer yet another version of "nature."&#160; Doing so right from the start breaks down binary models and makes it clear that we are not working with an either/ or framework, but with complex, multiple, and overlapping social positions which each author combines in unique ways into his or her own versions of nature. I like to use John Clare's poetry for this purpose, both because I want to introduce students to Clare and because he provides a significantly different approach to environment in terms of social class, writing from the tradition of laboring class or peasant poet (an identification about which he had mixed feelings, but which defined him at the time). Many of Clare's poems present a solitary first-person narrator moving through or exploring a landscape, in a way that offers useful comparisons with "I wandered lonely as a cloud," but with quite different modes of description, social positioning, sense of self, and relationship to environment.</p>
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<p>One way to present a Clare poem in relation to Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" is by contrasting what I will call Wordsworth's "aesthetics of spectatorship" against Clare's "aesthetics of engagement," or participatory relation to environment.&#160; The first section of this essay has already suggested some of the ways in which William Wordsworth's poem takes a spectatorial perspective: it presents a disembodied visual experience of a panoramic spectacle, composed into unity by the observer's single perspective, and makes this solitary observer the sole focal point for the production of meaning and value in the scene. In taking these positions, Wordsworth's poem assumes the detached, spectatorial relationship towards environment characteristic of the Western landscape tradition, as described in the work of Dennis Cosgrove, John Barrell, Gina Crandell, and others. Presenting a single fixed perspective outside the pictured landscape, the poem's subject position resembles that of a landscape painting, and it dramatizes how this position can allow the viewer to construct a sense of autonomous identity and imaginative ownership over the scene. Wordsworth's poem also presents the daffodils as entirely isolated from ordinary daily experience, human social relations, and physical production or labor, in ways that match the emerging Romantic construction of the aesthetic as disinterested individual contemplation. Much of Clare's poetry, in contrast, exemplifies what the aesthetic philosopher Arnold Berleant terms an&#160; "aesthetics of engagement," offering a sense of participation in, rather than detached observation of, his environment. Clare's poetry typically presents a much more fully embodied experience than Wordsworth's, immersing the narrator in a more diverse and complex natural environment which also includes a wider array of other human presence and activity. In contrast with Wordsworth's tendency to frame the landscape as separate from the self
and from ordinary social and economic life, Clare's sense of self and imagination cannot be easily separated from his immediate environmental and social contexts&#8212;at least not until some of his later, asylum poems take a more alienated "Romantic" position. Aesthetic experience, for Clare, involves active and present participation in environment and is not segregated from the rest of life. In many of the poems of his middle period, including his bird poems, Clare invites his readers to accompany him imaginatively into the scene, while Wordsworth more often invites the reader to share his position of detached observation and contemplation.</p>
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<p>A variety of Clare's poems might be used to highlight these different relations to environment. The two poems I have used most often for this exercise in my teaching, and which I will discuss here, are the sonnets "The passing traveler" and "The Beans in Blossom."&#160; Both poems can be found in the Everyman's Poetry edition of Clare, edited by R. K. R. Thornton and entitled simply <i>John Clare&#8212;</i>a very inexpensive edition that can be used to bring a varied selection of Clare's poetry into the classroom, to supplement poor coverage of his work in most Romanticism anthologies. Here is the text of "The passing traveler," as edited from manuscript in Edward Blunden's 1920 edition:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The passing traveller with wonder sees<br/>
A deep and ancient stonepit full of trees;<br/>
So deep and very deep the place has been,<br/>
The church might stand within and not be seen.<br/>
The passing stranger oft with wonder stops<br/>
And thinks he e'en could walk upon their tops,<br/>
And often stoops to see the busy crow,<br/>
And stands above and sees the eggs below;<br/>
And while the wild horse gives its head a toss,<br/>
The squirrel dances up and runs across.<br/>
The boy that stands and kills the black nosed bee<br/>
Dares down as soon as magpies' nests are found,<br/>
And wonders when he climbs the highest tree<br/>
To find it reaches scarce above the ground.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Wordsworth's poem, this sonnet begins with a traveler coming upon a new and startling scene.&#160; Rather than presenting the scene from a single stationed point as a panoramic spectacle, however, Clare places the traveler or "stranger" as an embodied observer moving within the landscape. He "oft with wonder stops," implying full bodily movement, and even "stoops" to look into the stone pit&#8212;an active verb that catches the sense of the observer positioning his body to gaze down into the pit, as opposed to Wordsworth's blandly disembodied visual relationship to landscape in verbs such as "see" and "gazed."&#160; Unlike Wordsworth's lonely wandering I, Clare's traveler is not detached or separated from the environment in which he moves. His full participation and "wonder," stressed by the repetition of that word, occurs in the continuous moment of embodied experience instead of being framed by the spatial and temporal separation of Wordsworth's poem. Clare's traveler even imagines himself walking on the tops of the trees: an impossible but vividly physical imagination of relationship to the place, again implicating his full bodily feeling in his perception. While Wordsworth's poem takes the static visual position of a picturesque viewing station or someone viewing a landscape painting, Clare's poem presents his observer in active physical relationship with the scene</p>
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<p>In addition to asking students to compare the role of the traveler in the two poems, you can also ask them to compare the poems' evocation of perspective, point of view, and agency. Why is the boy introduced in Clare's poem? Why all the animals?&#160; Wordsworth's environmental poetry tends to create an intense relationship between the speaker or poet and some one specific creature or entity in the natural world&#8212;a crowd of daffodils, a daisy, a lesser celandine, a butterfly, a cuckoo, a mountain, and so on&#8212;generally screening out the rest of the environment in order to define the narrator in exclusive relationship to this one entity. In screening out this ambient environment, Wordsworth's poetry tends to isolate each single non-human entity from its overlapping relationships with other entities in its environment, defined instead in exclusive relationship with the narrator. Isolating a single feature of the landscape also allows Wordsworth's poetic narrators to define themselves in separation from their wider social and environmental contexts, allowing him to define the self as isolated and autonomous. Clare's poetry, in contrast, tends to immerse the narrator in a more multi-faceted environment, full of multiple overlapping relationship between different creatures and elements of the landscape. The narrator is central to many of Clare's poems as well, but he does not present himself as central or necessary to the environment with which he engages, and whose multiple relationships he represents.</p>
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<p>"The passing traveler" indicates these overlapping networks of relationships both in its shift from the traveler's perspective to that of the boy, with which the poem concludes, and by the wide range of animals and animal activities included within the poem. Though the poem never explicitly assumes a non-human point of view, even the "busy crow," the "wild horse" which "gives its head a toss" ("his" head in the Everyman edition), and the squirrel who "dances up and runs across" seem to show their own active agency and purposes. "Nature" here is thus not presented as a single framed view, seen from the outside by an essentially disembodied spectator, but as a multi-centered participatory experience from the inside, in which each living creature has its own agency and purposes independent of the observer. The traveler's wonder is not privileged over the boy's search for nests and desire to kill bees, or even the squirrel and the horse and the crow with their own unspecified, non-human purposes. To indicate this equality of perspective, the same word, "wonder," is used both for the traveler at the beginning of the poem and for the boy at the end, further undermining any sense of the traveler's superiority through greater elevation, mobility, or breadth of experience. Appropriate to an aesthetics of engagement, the boy's wonder breaks upon him in the middle of the intense physical activity of climbing a tree to get at the magpies' nest: suspended in the branches, he reaches the same height as the traveler and in effect lives out the traveler's imagined desire to walk upon the treetops. In contrast to the dominant tradition of landscape aesthetics, with its emphasis on disinterestedness, cool separation, and distance, the boy's aesthetic response erupts suddenly out of this intense participatory experience as he pursues a specific goal, finding himself literally immersed in the branches of the trees and the lives of the birds and squirrels that they support. This
middle-of-the-tree perspective is about as far as one can get from the detached prospect position of the typical landscape poem or painting of the period, such as Wordsworth's poem.</p>
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<p>Students may make many of these comparisons on their own initiative, especially if they have just finished discussing similar issues in William and Dorothy's texts. If not, a few leading questions should call their attention to such differences. Why does the point of view change from traveler to boy, and what associations do these two figures carry? Why is the word "wonder" used for both? Why does the poem begin from the traveler's perspective on the edge of the stone pit and end from the boy's perspective in the middle of the tree? What is the role of the animals in the poem, and why are there so many of them? Why aren't there any animals in Wordsworth's poem, and relatively few objects or features of any kind? What kinds of verbs do the Clare and Wordsworth poems use, in relation to their overall presentation of environment? What sense of bodily activity, or lack of activity, do the two poems evoke? Why does Wordsworth create a break in space and time in his poem, while Clare does not? And so on. As with the William and Dorothy Wordsworth texts, students' attention can also be steered to formal qualities: the accretive, run-on quality of Clare's poem, hurrying on from image to image without any clear grammatical hierarchy, as opposed to Wordsworth's more careful syntactical containment and framing of the scene.&#160; Clare's poem, like much of his poetry, is paratactic, while Wordsworth's is hypotactic. You can also compare Clare's social positioning as a "peasant poet" or "laboring class poet" with Wordsworth's more genteel poetic identity.&#160; Clare's typical ground-level point of view and participatory relationship to environment may reflect in part his lower-class status and ongoing experience working in the fields, even after he achieved poetic reputation. Clare also had far less experience with the aesthetic detachment of the traveler than Wordsworth, whose life was thoroughly informed by travel in the picturesque mode. The boy climbing into the
treetops to come to the level of the traveler, in this respect, resonates provocatively with Clare's attempt to "rise" &#160;from his laboring class status to the level of genteel literary authorship. At the same time, Clare's poem challenges the period's standard equation of aesthetic appreciation with detachment, distance, and elevation, associated with elite social standing and disinterestedness, as John Barrell explores in his essay on landscape conventions and social class, "The public prospect and the private view: the politics of taste in eighteenth-century Britain."</p>
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<p>Barrell's <i>The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place</i> offers another way to present the difference in subject positions between the two poems. The book argues that Clare's poetry emerged from a local sense of place at odds with the universalizing, cosmopolitan relation to landscape typical of eighteenth-century and Romantic art and poetry. The paratactic multiplicity and particularity of Clare's descriptions&#8212;what Barrell calls his "aesthetics of disorder" (152)&#8212;contrast with the picturesque, and specifically Claudian, conventions of unified landscape composition favored by elite culture at the time. Barrell argues that while Wordsworth generally tries to "see through" a landscape to underlying, universal truths, in the spirit of this picturesque cosmopolitanism, Clare's relation to his specific, local environment provides his primary subject matter in its own right. In related positions, Tim Chilcott claims in <i>&#8216;A Real World and Doubting Mind'</i> that Clare presents nature as autonomous, having its own value apart from human concerns and purposes (67, 223); and James McKusick argues in <i>Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology</i> that Clare's local knowledge and environmental advocacy mark him as the first "deep ecological" writer in English, conveying a place-based identity through his local "ecolect," or environmentally-attuned language, that contrasts with Wordsworth's tendency to subordinate descriptions of nature to his own autonomous subjectivity (78, 89).</p>
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<p>Viewing different styles of landscape painting associated with the picturesque and the Romantic period provides another way to illustrate these differences in the classroom.&#160; Searching by painter in web art databases or clearinghouses such as The Web Gallery of Art &lt;<a href="http://www.wga.hu/index1.html">http://www.wga.hu/index1.html</a>&gt; or ArtCyclopedia &lt;<a href="http://www.artcyclopedia.com">http://www.artcyclopedia.com</a>&gt;, you can show students examples of these painting styles and point out analogies with literary texts. The paintings of Claude Lorraine, for instance, use framing techniques and panoramic views to distance the observer from the landscape, in what became a standard Romantic-era aesthetic position of disinterested picturesque connoisseurship. William Gilpin's drawings illustrate the generalizing tendencies of the picturesque mode, in ways also similar to William Wordsworth's poem. Peter De Wint, in contrast, provides a counter-example of a Romantic era painter, celebrated by Clare in his "Essay on Landscape" manuscript, who provides a more intimate, ground-level sense of participation in the scene, with a greater emphasis on realistic natural detail&#8212;a point of view closer to that of Clare's poetic narrators.</p>
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<p>Another Clare sonnet, "The Beans in Blossom," presents a first-person voice that demonstrates this typical ground-level engagement and participation. Here is the poem as it appeared in Clare's 1835 <i>Rural Muse</i>, much more heavily punctuated than in versions edited from manuscript (such as the Everyman edition):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The south-west wind! how pleasant in the face<br/>
It breathes! while, sauntering in a musing pace,<br/>
I roam these new ploughed fields; or by the side<br/>
Of this old wood, where happy birds abide,<br/>
And the rich blackbird, through his golden bill,<br/>
Utters wild music when the rest are still.<br/>
Luscious the scent comes of the blossomed bean,<br/>
As o'er the path in rich disorder lean<br/>
Its stalks; when bees, in busy rows and toils,<br/>
Load home luxuriantly their yellow spoils.<br/>
The herd-cows toss the molehills in their play;<br/>
And often stand the stranger's steps at bay,<br/>
Mid clover blossoms red and tawny white,<br/>
Strong scented with the summer's warm delight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As with "The passing traveler," you can begin discussion of this poem by asking students to consider the speaker's point of view and relationship to his environment, including his sensual and embodied relationship to place. Instead of beginning with vision, the poem begins with the tactile experience of the wind against the speaker's face, and it evokes a rich range of sensual experience: the "wild music" of the blackbird, the "luscious" scent of the blossomed beans, and the concluding synesthesia of "the Summer's warm delight," combining touch and smell and indeed all the senses. The diversity of sensual experience in the poem contrasts with the almost entirely visual experience of Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud."&#160; Though Wordsworth often invokes sound in his poetry, he rarely invokes the proximate senses of smell, taste, and touch with their much more intimate sense of participation in environment&#8212;perhaps because such proximal experience tends to break down boundaries between self and world and dissolve the self's claims to autonomy.</p>
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<p align="left">Clare's "Beans in Blossom" also gives the sense of physically moving through the landscape, complementing its evocation of embodiment and full sensual immersion. The reader almost has to duck to get through the "rich disorder" of the beans, which seem to lean over the path with an intimate sense of space, then is stopped short, together with the narrator, by the physical obstruction of the cows. Though Wordsworth's poem also begins with movement through the landscape, the metaphor of the cloud floating through the clear sky removes all specific sense of embodiment or sensual relation to an ambient environment, as opposed to Clare's rich invocation of the body moving through tactile and aural, as well as visual, space. In sum, Wordsworth presents his landscape, in the picturesque tradition, as a framed station or viewing point, isolating the spectator at a safe visual distance from the scene he surveys. Clare's landscape, in contrast, unfolds its significance unpredictably as the narrator moves through it, fully comfortable in his environment but without this secure sense of detachment. The sudden challenge of the cows that stops the progress of the poem epitomizes this difference between a spectatorial and participatory relationship to environment and makes the position of disinterested spectatorship impossible. Wordsworth's poem encourages the reader to forget his or her body in vision, and ultimately to internalize the landscape in imagination. Clare's playful and challenging cows confront the reader with the experience of embodiedness, in which the narrator is only one creature among many others, moving within and enjoying the "Summer's warm delight."<br/></p>
<div align="left"><b>III. Romantic Ecologies and the Significance of "Nature"</b><br/></div>
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<li>In the end, getting students to compare different Romantic-era versions of "nature" goes beyond just literary and historicist investigation. Though it is important that students understand different Romantic-era approaches to environment in relation to the cultural and material history of the time, it is still more important for them to use this knowledge to consider their own material, social, and cultural relation to environment. How, I like to ask students at some point in the semester, do Romantic versions of nature continue to inform our current culture? How do you imagine your own relation to environment, and what are the implications for your sense of identity, modes of perception, and social positioning? "Nature" understood in this larger sense becomes a whole lot more interesting and challenging&#8212;no longer understood as a pre-given entity outside of us, but as a broad array of social, cultural, and environmental relationships which we must all actively negotiate. To play a slight variation on another Wordsworth poem, such a nature is half given, half created&#8212;given by our cultural legacy and social structures, created by how we negotiate and shape that inheritance. Yet contra Wordsworth, such a "nature" is not exclusively or primarily personal, but social as well.</li>
<li>
<p>One issue that comes to the foreground in comparing William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and John Clare's representations of environment is the issue of particularity versus abstraction in relating to environment. Although in my experience students tend to value what they see as the "down-to-earth" quality of Clare's poetry and Dorothy Wordsworth's journal writing, especially in relation to William Wordsworth's occasionally heavy-handed didacticism, they also frequently object that Clare and Dorothy Wordsworth focus too much on description and do not have enough greater meaning. In raising this objection, students unknowingly take their place in a long critical tradition, in which they have been trained.&#160; Such students have come to believe, evidently, that meaning is something that needs to be abstractable and transferable from particular situations and local environments; that truth, like nature, exists primarily in the abstract. I too believe in the value of certain kinds of abstraction&#8212;without it, a work of literature could only speak to its immediate time and occasion, and it would be hard to justify teaching literature at all. But if meaning is defined only by its ability to be abstracted or extracted in this way&#8212;if even environmental writing produces only general meanings and a generalized sense of identity and place&#8212;then how can texts teach us to inhabit our own environments in anything but abstract ways? How can we teach students generalizable skills and shared cultural traditions, while at the same time teaching them to be good environmental citizens, defining themselves in relation to specific places and relationships? Using McKusick's term, how can Clare's "ecolect" and intensely particular relation to place teach us to develop our own such language and relationships?</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>These questions raise issues which remain unresolved for me, but which lie at the heart of my purposes in teaching Romantic (and other) ecology. I want to teach my students to relate to and define themselves through their own local environments, both social and natural; but at the same time, I want to teach them the ability to generalize and compare, to understand and use rhetoric, to be able to extract the assumptions and implications of any given position. The college classroom, it seems to me, is set up to teach these general skills much better than the particular or localizing ones. It creates citizens for a "plug-in" culture, expert at analyzing and synthesizing information but only incidentally grounded in their local environments, ready to pack up and carry their skills away from college at the end of four years to another location, then pack up again as many times as necessary in the migratory experience of middle-class professional life for which we train them. Anywhere they go in this country, they can plug in to the same media sources, access the same web pages, buy their goods from the same stores, eat at the same chain restaurants, and use the same generalizable interpretive skills, independent of the local particularities of place. Environmental consciousness can all too easily become another generalized brand.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I have come to understand much of William Wordsworth's environment-related poetry as encouraging just this migratory sense of identity&#8212;providing the cultural capital, as in the daffodils poem, for the construction of individual identity and value regardless of any specific environmental or social relationship and commitment. Nature, like art or literature, takes on its meaning and value in this model precisely because of its independence from context, protected in its aesthetic sphere from the heartless mundanity of everyday life, as Wordsworth lays out so memorably in "Tintern Abbey."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I teach Romantic ecology in part to challenge this separation between a valued nature/art and a devalued everyday life, which remains a central part of Romanticism's cultural inheritance. In the end, I cannot provide answers for students, only questions; but with my questions, I try to get them to see "nature" in a broader sense, in the spirit of Raymond Williams's essay. Unless they can see nature as inseparable from issues of class, gender, identity, social structure, politics, and community (among other issues), it will remain only an impossible Romantic dream of transcendence, little different from the consumer fantasies that this idea of nature often claims to oppose. Nature, I want to teach them, is not something we simply return to or escape to; it is the total network of relationships within which we must actively negotiate our places, and it includes the human as well as the non-human. In the same way, I want them to learn, we should not just read or interpret literature from a secure aesthetic distance; we must actively negotiate our relationship to it in an ongoing, open-ended process, not only as individuals but as a classroom community, and ultimately as a society. This is the version of nature&#8212;and the version of literature&#8212;I want to model for them.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>My hope is that by teaching students to recognize different versions of nature in the Romantic period and explore the assumptions and implications of these positions, I can teach them to bring that same kind of engagement to their own lives and environments. In presenting these models of relationship to environment for investigation, the literature we discuss offers students various aesthetic and moral positions to "try on" and explore: necessarily general models which they can then apply to their own particular local places and social positionings. I hope both to help them build these general skills and at the same time to foster their awareness of and commitment to particularity. At the very least, I hope my students will be impelled to take "nature" out of its heavily varnished and often invisible frame.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade"/>
<blockquote>
<h4><b>Citations and Suggested Further Reading</b></h4>
<p><b>Primary Sources</b></p>
<p class="wc">Clare, John. <i>John Clare</i> (Everyman's Poetry Library). Ed. R.K.R. Thornton, London: J.M. Dent, 1997.</p>
<p class="wc">---.&#160;<i>John Clare: Poems Chiefly From Manuscript</i>. Ed. Edmund Blunden and Alan Porter. London: R. Cobden-Sanderson, 1920.</p>
<p class="wc">---.&#160;"Essay on Landscape." <i>The Prose of John Clare</i>. Eds. J.W. and Anne Tibble. London: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1951.</p>
<p class="wc">Wordsworth, Dorothy. <i>Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth</i>. Ed. E. de Selincourt, 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1959.</p>
<p class="wc">Wordsworth, William. <i>Poems, in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800-7</i>. Ed. Jared Curtis. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1983).</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade"/>
<p><b>Secondary Sources</b></p>
<p class="wc">Barrell, John. <i>The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place, 1730-1840.</i> Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1972.<br/>
A classic study of John Clare in his social and environmental contexts, with emphasis on the structure of his descriptions.</p>
<p class="wc">---. "The public prospect and the private view: the politics of taste in eighteenth-century Britain." <i>Reading Landscape: country-city-capital</i>. Ed. Simon Pugh. Manchester, England: Manchester Univ. Press, 1990, pp. 19-40.<br/>
Explores the relation between the aesthetics of landscape and social positioning in eighteenth-century Britain.</p>
<p class="wc">Berleant, Arnold. <i>The Aesthetics of Environment.</i> Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1992.<br/>
Presents a model of an "aesthetics of engagement" in relation to environment, questioning traditional aesthetic models of detachment and disinterestedness.</p>
<p class="wc">Chilcott, Tim. <i>'A Real World and Doubting Mind': A Critical Study of the Poetry of John Clare.</i> Hull, England: Hull Univ. Press, 1985.<br/>
Good overview of Clare's poetry and discussion of his style of description and syntax, complements Barrell's <i>Idea of Landscape</i>.</p>
<p class="wc">Cosgrove, Dennis. <i>Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape.</i> Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1984.<br/>
Influential exploration of the history of landscape representation and its social significance.</p>
<p class="wc">Crandall, Gina. <i>Nature Pictorialized: the 'View' in Landscape History.</i> Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993.<br/>
History and significance of pictorial relationship to landscape.</p>
<p class="wc">Cronon, William, ed. <i>Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature.</i> New York: W.W. Norton, 1996.<br/>
A provocative and controversial exploration of how humans construct "nature" and the social significance of such constructions.</p>
<p class="wc">Homans, Margaret. <i>Women Writers and Poetic Identity.</i> Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990.<br/>
Useful consideration of women writers as an alternative social position and tradition within Romanticism, with a good chapter on Dorothy Wordsworth in particular.</p>
<p class="wc">Labbe, Jacqueline. <i>Romantic Visualitues: Landscape, Gender, and Romanticism</i> New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.<br/>
Discusses various modes of landscape aesthetics in relation to gender.</p>
<p class="wc">Levin, Susan M. <i>Dorothy Wordsworth and Romanticism.</i> New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1987.<br/>
Good overview of Dorothy Wordsworth's writing.</p>
<p class="wc">McKusick, James. <i>Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology.</i> New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.<br/>
A concise overview of the British and American Romantic environmental traditions and some of their major writers, including chapters on William Wordsworth and John Clare, with an emphasis on ecological consciousness and relation to the local.</p>
<p class="wc">Mellor, Anne. <i>Romanticism and Gender.</i> New York: Routledge, 1993.<br/>
Contrasts different masculine and feminine traditions of Romantic writing and varying constructions of gender, including different relationships to the physical or natural world.</p>
<p class="wc">Plumwood, Val. <i>Feminism and the Mastery of Nature.</i> London: Routledge, 1993.<br/>
Presents ecofeminism as a challenge to the dominant Western philosophical and environment tradition, from Greek philosophy through deep ecology. A challenging, theoretically sophisticated, and richly rewarding exploration.</p>
<p class="wc">Williams, Raymond. "The Idea of Nature." <i>Problems in Materialism and Culture.</i> London: NLB, 1980, pp. 67-85. Provocative and concise introduction to the changing history of "nature" in the Western tradition and the relation between ideas of nature and ideas of self and society.</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade"/>
<p><b>Web Resources</b></p>
<p class="wc"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355.html">SYLLABUS for ENGL355</a>: Nature, Class, and Identity in British Romanticism</p>
<p class="wc"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355b.html">SYLLABUS for ENGL355b</a>: Nature and Gender in British and American Romanticism</p>
<p class="wc">The John Clare Page&#160;(edited by Simon Kovesi, sponsored by Nottingham Trent University)&#160; &lt;<a href="http://www.johnclare.info">http://www.johnclare.info</a>&gt;<b>&#160;</b><br/>
Excellent website on Clare with various resources, including contexts, scholarly articles, and debates.</p>
<p class="wc">T.C.G.'s Wordsworth Page (Thomas C. Gannon) &lt;<a href="http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/words.html">http://www.usd.edu/~tgannon/words.html</a>&gt;<br/>
Relatively little content, but a good collection of links on Wordsworth.</p>
<p class="wc">The Wordsworth Trust&#160;&lt;<a href="http://www.wordsworth.org.uk">http://www.wordsworth.org.uk</a>&gt;&#160;<br/>
Includes a virtual tour of Dove Cottage and other information and images on Wordsworth and Grasmere.</p>
<p class="wc">Women Romantic-Era Writers&#160;(Adriana Craciun) &lt;<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/ac/wrew.htm">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/ac/wrew.htm</a>&gt;<br/>
There's not much specifically on Dorothy Wordsworth on the web, but this link is a good resource for the exploration of Romantic women writers generally.</p>
<p class="wc">The Web Gallery of Art&#160;&lt;<a href="http://www.wga.hu">http://www.wga.hu</a>&gt; and ArtCyclopedia&#160;&lt;<a href="http://www.artcyclopedia.com">http://www.artcyclopedia.com</a>&gt;&#160;<br/>
The Web Gallery includes a substantial database of searchable art images; ArtCyclopedia provides a more comprehensive list of links to images on other websites, organized under the artist's name. Both databases can be used to access paintings that defined the picturesque style by artists such as Claude Lorraine, Gaspard Poussin, and Salvator Rosa, and landscape paintings by Romantic era painters such as William Gilpin, John Constable, J.W.M. Turner, or Peter De Wint.</p>
</blockquote>
</div></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/index.html">Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/hess-scott">Hess, Scott</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/757" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">pedagogy</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1243" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environment</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1639" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nature</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/the-passing-traveler" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">The Passing Traveler</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/title/beans-blossom" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">&#039;The Beans in Blossom&#039;</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-cronon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Cronon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/raymond-williams" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Raymond Williams</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-gilpin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Gilpin</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/richmond" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Richmond</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/ohio" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ohio</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/indiana" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Indiana</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-country-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Country:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/country/united-states" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">United States</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:39:31 +0000rc-admin22057 at http://www.rc.umd.eduEng. 355, Fall '05: Nature and Gender in British and American Romanticismhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355b.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><h3 align="center"><strong>Romanticism (Eng. 355), Fall '05: Nature and Gender in British and American Romanticism</strong></h3>
<blockquote>
<p>In the woods, we return to reason and faith.&#160; There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,&#8212;no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.&#160; Standing on the bare ground,&#8212;my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,&#8212;all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><span class="epigcit"><em>Ralph Waldo Emerson,</em> Nature</span></p>
<h4>Instructor: Scott Hess, Assistant Prof. Earlham College</h4>
<p>[Note&#8212;I have published the readings, course assignments, texts, and course goals in this sample syllabus, for a class which met three times per week. I removed my course policies on attendance, late papers, and classroom etiquette. I'm a believer in spelling out assignments and expectations in syllabi as fully as possible, to be as explicit as possible with students before they begin the course. Compressing both British and American Romanticism into a single semester is a challenge&#8212;especially if one decides to teach <em>Moby Dick</em>, as I did this semester. Here, I've reluctantly decided to leave out Blake and Austen, both of whom I usually teach in British Romanticism classes, and to reduce P.B. Shelley and Byron to a single class period of coverage each. One final explanatory note: I deliberately intersperse short poetry readings in the middle of the <em>Moby Dick</em> assignment, to give students more time to keep up with the reading and finish the novel.]</p>
<p><strong><u>Course Goals</u></strong></p>
<p>This course will offer a general introduction to British and American Romanticism, including a wide range of writers in both poetry and prose.&#160; To give thematic coherence to this broad topic, we will focus in issues of nature, gender, and identity, within the social and cultural contexts of the period.&#160; As the quotation from Emerson above indicates, the idea of nature was centrally important to Romantic writers and thinkers.&#160; For many, it supported individual identity in solitude apart from society, fostered the development of individual imaginative, moral, and spiritual powers, and provided a sense of coherence, meaning, and value in an increasingly secularized society, in which old religious traditions were losing some of their power.&#160; Yet nature, with the sense of individual transcendence that came with it, could often have its dark and destructive sides, also reflecting the darkness and destruction of the human spirit or of unfettered individualism.&#160; Works such as <em>Moby Dick</em> and <em>Frankenstein</em> raised questions about the ultimate morality of scientific knowledge and human tendencies to exploit and destroy, rather than harmonize, with the environment and the other creatures in it.&#160; Also problematic, "nature" was often used to bolster established models of gender, race, and class during the period, including male, white, elite domination of these various other groups.&#160; Concentrating on gender will allow us to explore the cultural politics of nature during the period in more depth, in relation to a specific cultural topic.&#160; At the same time, by studying both British and American romantic writers, we will trace how Romanticism spread across the Atlantic and adapted to the social and environmental climate of the New World, in ways that continue to be highly significant for American society today.</p>
<p><strong><u>Course Texts</u></strong></p>
<p><em>The Heath Anthology of American Literature: Volume B: Early Nineteenth Century 1800-1865</em>&#160; (5th edition&#8212;you will need this specific edition)</p>
<p><em>The Longman Anthology of British Literature, Volume 2A: The Romantics and Their Contemporaries</em> (2nd Edition&#8212;you will need this specific edition)</p>
<p><em>John Clare</em> (Everyman Poetry Series), edited by Kelsey Thorton</p>
<p><em>Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus</em> (Oxford World's Classics), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, edited by James Kinsley&#160; (Note: if you use a different edition, by sure it is the revised 1831 text and not the earlier version)</p>
<p><em>Moby Dick</em> (Oxford World's Classics), by Herman Melville, Tony Tanner (Editor)</p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong><u>Class Meetings and Assignments</u></strong></p>
<p>Note that all otherwise unidentified readings for weeks 1-8 are from the Longman Anthology (British); for weeks 9-15 from the Heath Anthology (American).&#160; Parentheses indicate page numbers, unless otherwise noted.</p>
<p><strong>Week 1</strong></p>
<p>Wed. Aug. 24&#160; Introduction and Housekeeping: in-class discussion of William Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud"; Dorothy Wordsworth, journal entry; John Clare, "Beans in Blossom" and "The passing traveler"</p>
<p>Fri. Aug. 26&#160; Versions of Nature and The Roots of British Romanticism: Raymond Williams, "Ideas of Nature" (posted on course website); Alexander Pope, <em>An Essay on Man</em>, Epistle One (read lines 1-112, 173-292) and Epistle Two (lines 1-18); Anne Finch, "Nocturnal Reverie"; Thomas Gray, <em>Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard</em> (handouts)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 2</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Aug. 29&#160; Introduction to Romanticism and the Poetics of Sensibility: "The Romantics and Their Contemporaries" (2-29, including color plates and image on 2); Charlotte Smith, all selections (49-55)</p>
<p>Wed. Aug. 31 <strong>&#160;</strong>Women Poets of the 1790s: Anna Letitia Barbauld, "Mouse's Petition," "On a Lady's Writing," "Inscription for an Ice-House," "To a Little Invisible Being," "To the Poor," "Washing Day" (31-38); Mary Robinson, "Ode to Beauty," "January, 1795,"&#160; all selections from Sappho and Phaon, "The Camp," The Haunted Beach," London's Summer Morning," "The Old Beggar" (214-25)<br/>
<strong>close reading paper, 1-2 pages, due in class</strong></p>
<p>Fri. Sept. 2&#160; William Wordsworth, all selections from <em>Lyrical Ballads</em>, including "Preface" (336-62)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 3</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Sept. 5&#160; William Wordsworth, Nature, and Gender: critical writing on Wordsworth and gender, Meena Alexander from <em>Women and Romanticism,</em> pp. 25-30, Marlon B. Ross "Naturalizing Gender: Woman's Place in Wordsworth's Ideological Landscape," and Heidi Thomson "'We Are Two': The Address to Dorothy in 'Tintern Abbey'" (posted on course website&#8212;read in that order); "Tintern Abbey" (read again), "Strange Fits of Passion," "She Dwelt Among Untrodden Ways," "Three Years She Grew," "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," "Lucy Gray," "Nutting," "I Travell'd Among Unknown Men," "The Solitary Reaper," "Resolution and Independence"&#160; (352-56, 363-67, 368-69, 450-53, 460)<br/>
<strong>position paper due in class, 3-4 pages</strong></p>
<p>Wed. Sept. 7&#160; Nature, the Sublime, and Poetic Identity: William Wordsworth, from <em>The Prelude</em>, all selections from books one, two, seven, and thirteen; lines 243-397 of book eleven; lines 492-657 of book six (389-405, 417-23, 440-50); Edmund Burke, all selections from <em>A Philosophical Inquiry</em> (499-505)</p>
<p>Fri. Sept. 9&#160; Dorothy Wordsworth, all poems, journal entries, and letters except for the last two letters (465-88)<br/>
<strong>classmate comments due on paper, by 3 pm</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 4</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Sept. 12&#160; Nature from the Laborer's Perspective: John Clare (from Heath anthology), "Written in November" (both versions), "The Lament of Swordy Well," "The Mouse's Nest" 841-42, 844-49), from <em>John Clare</em>, "The Wheat Ripening," "The Beans in Blossom," "Sonnet: I dreaded walking where there was no path," "Sonnet: 'The passing traveler,'" "The Summer Shower," "The Foddering Boy," "The Gipsy Camp," "The Skylark," "Sonnet: 'Among the orchard weeds,'" "The Nightingale's Nest," "The Yellowhammer's Nest," "The Pettichap's Nest," "Sonnet: the Hedgehog," "Little Trotty Wagtail" (8-10, 21-22, 43-45, 47-53, 55)</p>
<p>Wed. Sept. 14&#160; John Clare (from <em>John Clare</em>), "Remembrances," "The Flitting," "The Moors," "An Invite to Eternity," "I Am," "A Vision," "To John Clare," "To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait" (67-76, 87-89, 90-91, 104)</p>
<p>Fri. Sept. 16&#160; The Natural and the Supernatural: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Eolian Harp," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1817 version), "Frost at Midnight" (522-26, 528-42, 562-63)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 5</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Sept. 19&#160; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan," "Christabel" (545-61); Mary Robinson, "To the Poet Coleridge" (225-27)<br/>
<strong>revision of position paper due, in class</strong></p>
<p>Wed. Sept. 21&#160; Percy Bysshe Shelley, "To Wordsworth," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Mont Blanc," "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," "To a Skylark, "To a Cloud" (752-60, 771-76, 792-94)</p>
<p>Fri. Sept. 23&#160; Women and Their Rights: Mary Wollstonecraft, <em>A Vindication of the Rights of Women</em>, dedication, Introduction, and all excerpts from chapters two, three, and thirteen (227-57); Anna Letitia Barbauld, "The Rights of Women" (272-73); Richard Polwhele, all excerpts from "The Unsex'd Females" (274-80); Hannah More, excerpts from <em>Strictures on the modern System of Female Education</em>, Introduction and Chapter 14 only (291-92, 295-97)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 6</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Sept. 26&#160; The Byronic Hero and Romantic Masculinity: Lord Byron, <em>Manfred</em>, "Prometheus," excerpt from <em>Child Harold's Pilgrimage</em> on Napoleon (603-38, 641-44)</p>
<p>Wed. Sept. 28&#160; The Poetess as Doomed Heroine: Felicia Hemans, "The Wife of Asrubal," "The Last Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra," "Casabianca," "The Bride of the Greek Isle," "Properzia Rossi," "The Graves of a Household," "Woman and Fame," critical excerpts on Hemans (810-17, 819-28, 834, 836-40)</p>
<p>Fri. Sept. 30&#160; Maria Wollstonecraft, excerpt from <em>Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman</em> (257-68)<br/>
<strong>close reading paper: 1st due date, by 3 pm</strong></p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 7</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Oct. 3&#160; Mary Shelley, <em>Frankenstein</em>, including Shelley's Introduction, opening letters, and chapters 1-8 (5-89)</p>
<p>Wed. Oct. 5 <em>Frankenstein</em> cont., chapters 9-17 (90-149)</p>
<p>Fri. Oct. 7 finish <em>Frankenstein</em> (149-223)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 8</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Oct. 10&#160; Sensibility and the Male Poet: John Keats, "When I Have Fears," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy," all Odes, letters of 22 Nov. 1817, Dec. 1817, 3 Feb. 1818, 3 May 1818, 18 July 1818, 27 Oct. 1818, Spring 1819 (864-86, 900-12)</p>
<p>Wed. Oct. 12&#160; Poetry and Truth: John Keats, <em>Lamia</em> (course handout)</p>
<p>Fri. Oct. 14&#160;&#160;&#160; <strong>Mid-semester Break</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 9</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Oct. 17&#160; American Romanticism: Ralph Waldo Emerson, <em>Nature</em>,&#160; "The Rhodora," "The Snow-Storm," "Hamatreya" (1582-1609, 1669-73)</p>
<p>Wed. Oct. 19&#160; America and the Old World:&#160; Washington Irving, "Rip Van Winkle" (2153-65); Susan Fenimore Cooper, "A Dissolving View" (course website posting&#8212;print and bring to class)</p>
<p>Fri. Oct. 21 America and the Old World cont.: Emerson, "Self-Reliance," "Concord Hymn" (1621-38, 1669); Margaret Fuller, excerpt from <em>American Literature</em> (first three pages only, 1719-21) and Dispatch 18 (1731-35)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 10</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Oct. 24&#160; Women in America: Fuller, all excerpts from <em>Woman in the Nineteenth Century</em> (1697-1719); Sarah Moore Grimk&#233;, all excerpts from <em>Letters on the Equality of the Sexes</em> (2082-91); Sojourner Truth, all excerpts (2092-99); Elizabeth Cady Stanton, all excerpts (2109-15)<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<br/>
Wed. Oct. 26&#160; Male Self-Reliance: Henry David Thoreau, from <em>Walden</em>, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For," "Higher Laws," and "Conclusion" (1753-69, 1779-87)</p>
<p>Fri. Oct. 28 American Gothic:&#160; Edgar Allen Poe, "Ligeia," "Sonnet&#8212;To Science," "Israfrel," "The City in the Sea," "The Raven," "Ulalume," "Annabel Lee"&#160; (2462-72, 2529, 2531-34, 2539-46)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 11</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Oct. 31&#160; Female Narrative Fiction: Catharine Maria Sedgewick, from <em>Hope Leslie</em>, first two selections only (2207-19); Elizabeth Stoddard, "Lemorne Versus Huell" (2822-36)<br/>
<strong>close reading paper: 2</strong><strong>nd due date, by 3 pm</strong></p>
<p>Wed. Nov. 2&#160; American Romance: Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Young Goodman Brown," "The Minister's Black Veil" (2258-75)</p>
<p>Fri. Nov. 4&#160; Science, Nature, and Gender: Hawthorne, "The Birth-Mark," "Rappacini's Daughter" (2276-2306)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 12</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Nov. 7&#160; Epic Romance: Herman Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, TBA</p>
<p>Wed. Nov. 9&#160; William Cullen Bryant, "Thanatopsis," "The Yellow Violet," "To a Waterfowl," "To Cole," "To the Fringed Gentian," "The Prairies" (2888-96); keep reading <em>Moby Dick</em></p>
<p>Fri. Nov. 11&#160; Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, TBA</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 13</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Nov. 14&#160; Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, TBA</p>
<p>Wed. Nov. 16&#160; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, all selections (2897-2903); keep reading <em>Moby Dick</em></p>
<p>Fri. Nov. 18&#160; Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, TBA</p>
<p><strong>[Thanksgiving Break, Nov. 19&#8212;Nov. 26]</strong></p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 14</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Nov. 28&#160; Melville, <em>Moby Dick</em>, TBA</p>
<p>Wed. Nov. 30&#160; Frances Sargent Locke Osgood, "The Little Hand," "The Maiden's Mistake," "Oh! Hasten to My Side," "A Reply to One Who Said, Write From Your Heart," "Lines (suggested by the announcement &#8230;)," "Woman," "Little Children," "To a Slandered Poetess," "The Indian Maid's Reply" (2907-17); keep reading <em>Moby Dick</em></p>
<p>Fri. Dec. 2&#160; Melville, finish <em>Moby Dick</em><br/>
<strong>annotated bibliography due, by 3 pm</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 15</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Dec. 5&#160; A New American Poetry: "Preface" to <em>Leaves of Grass,</em> read only pages 2923-2927 (plus end of paragraph on next page) and 2935 (from start of first paragraph) to end; <em>Song of Myself</em>, sections 1-14, 20-21, 24, 32, 44, 46-52 (2937-46, 2950-52, 2954-56, 2960, 2975-82)</p>
<p>Wed. Dec. 7&#160; Self and Sexuality: Walt Whitman, "One's-Self I Sing," "A Woman Waits for Me," "Recorders Ages Hence," "When I Heard at the Close of Day," "Here the Frailest Leaves of Me," "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer," "The Dalliance of the Eagles," "As I Lay With My Head in Your Lap, Camerado," "To a Locomotive in Winter" (2990-99, 3007, 3013, 3024)</p>
<p>Fri. Dec. 9&#160; From Romanticism to Modernism: Emily Dickinson,&#160; "These are the days when birds come back," "I felt a funeral, in my brain," "I'm nobody," "It sifts from leaden sieves," "Some keep a Sabbath going to church," "A bird came down the walk," "What soft cherubic creatures," "Much madness is divinest sense," "This is my letter to the world," "I heard a fly buzz when I died," "They shut me up in prose." "The brain is wider than the sky," "My life had stood a loaded gun," "A narrow fellow in the grass," "To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee" (3048, 3051, 3054-59, 3061-62, 3066-67, 3072-75, 3081)</p>
<p><strong>no final exam</strong><br/>
<strong>final paper due 3 pm, Monday Dec. 12</strong></p>
<h3>Written Assignments &amp; Evaluation</h3>
<p>Your final grade will be calculated from the following percentages:</p>
<div class="table"><span class="tableleft">course evaluation<br/>
class discussion leading<br/>
discussion leading paper<br/>
close reading paper<br/>
Wordsworth position paper<br/>
close reading paper(s)<br/>
final paper<br/>
participation and discussion provocation</span> <span class="tablemid">0% (but required)<br/>
5%<br/>
15%<br/>
0% (but required)<br/>
10%<br/>
20% for one or 10% each for two<br/>
25%<br/>
25%</span></div>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong><em>Course Evaluation (0%, but required)</em></strong></p>
<p>In order to receive a grade in this course, you will need to evaluate the design of the course and the quality of instruction you have received.&#160; Consider that you are acting on behalf of future Earlham students who will take this class or other classes from the instructor.&#160; Please be thoughtful, rigorous, and as specific as possible.</p>
<p><strong><em>Class Discussion Leading (5%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Students will be asked to lead discussion during one class period of their own choice, in groups of two if possible (students may lead alone if there is an odd number of students or if they have strong unreconcilable preferences).&#160; Prior to leading discussion, students must find at least two scholarly books, book chapters, or articles relevant to the readings for that day (ask me if you need help or guidance).&#160; These scholarly texts should provide stimulus for thought and discussion, which may involve adding to our contextual understanding of the readings.&#160; The purpose of the class is not just to present or summarize your critical sources, but to use them to stimulate class discussion.&#160; You might choose to present or summarize your critical sources briefly at the beginning of class; incorporate them into a series of questions; or introduce them at some point later in the discussion.&#160; The discussion does not have to be limited to the issues raised by the scholarly sources you have chosen, and may develop in other directions&#8212;it's up to you.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Class discussion leading will be graded based on how well you use your critical sources to provoke discussion; the organization and creativity of your overall plan for the class; your success in leading the class in significant interpretation of the readings; and your class leadership skills and good faith effort to involve the rest of the class in active participation (if you have a well-conceived plan to stimulate class participation, it won't count against you if the class doesn't respond well on that particular day).&#160; You are encouraged to lead the class in creative activities or formats if you like (such as small group work; in-class writing or role playing; use of other media such as drawing or acting; etc.), as long as your activities involve the scholarly sources in some significant way, include active participation by all class members, and lead to significant interpretation of the readings.&#160; If you use a non-conventional format, you must also explicitly make clear at some point how the activity adds insight to our interpretation the text (i.e. fun is good, but we need to do more than just have fun).&#160; All members of the group are expected to be involved significantly in class discussion leading, and failure to do so will effect your overall group grade for this assignment.</p>
<p><strong><em>Discussion Leading Paper (15%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Double spaced, 12 pt. font, with 1 or 1.25" margins.&#160; You will be expected to write a paper on the materials you presented and discussed in class, due one week after the day on which you presented.&#160; This paper should be on a theme of your choice that emerges out of the day's discussion and must use your research sources in some significant way.&#160; You should not just present or summarize those sources.&#160; Instead, your paper should take a position in relation to those sources: you might dialogue with them, build or extrapolate from them, argue against them, etc..&#160; The emphasis for this paper, as in all papers in the course, should be on your own original interpretation. You may either choose to write a single paper together as a group, or separate papers as individuals.&#160; If you write as a group, you will receive the same grade for the entire group.&#160;<br/>
You are encouraged to use points that came up during class discussion in this paper, even if the ideas came from your classmates or the instructor.&#160; In fact, you should approach class discussion leading as an opportunity to help you explore and develop your ideas for the paper.&#160; The paper will be evaluated based on your engagement with the critical sources; your ability to use those sources to support and develop your own interpretation of the text(s) in insightful and creative ways; the coherence and effectiveness of your argument; your use of careful close reading and quotation from the text(s); and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.</p>
<p><strong><em>Close Reading Paper, 1-2 pages (part of participation grade)</em></strong></p>
<p>Same format as discussion leading paper.&#160; You should offer a close reading and interpretation of one of the poems from the day's readings, relating the poem in some way to a theme you identify in the poetry of Smith, Barbauld, and Robinson overall.&#160; Focus primarily on the poem you have chosen to interpret, rather than the theme, but use the theme to contextualize your reading.&#160; This paper is a kind of trial run for later papers and chance to practice your close reading and interpretation of poems.&#160; It will be graded, to give you a sense of where you stand, but the grade will not count towards your final course grade.&#160; Failure to fulfill the assignment on time, however, will result in a penalty to your final participation grade.&#160;&#160; We will use the papers as the jumping off point for the day's class discussion.</p>
<p><strong><em>Position Paper: on Wordsworth, Nature, and Gender, 4-5 pages (10%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Same format as discussion leading paper.&#160; For Mon., Sept. 5, we will read a number of poems by William Wordsworth that involve issues of gender and nature, together with several critical essays on these topics.&#160; In this paper, you should take your own position on the way Wordsworth addresses nature and gender in one or more of the poems.&#160; Your paper should engage with at least two of the critical sources <em>and</em> include an extensive close reading and interpretation of at least one Wordsworth poem not substantially commented on by the critical sources.&#160; You may, if you like, also comment briefly on other Wordsworth poems or on other poems we have read earlier in the semester (by one of the women poets, for example).&#160; The purpose of the paper is, first, to show you understand the critics; second, to take a position of your own in relation to them; and third, to interpret the poetry from this position.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Your paper will be evaluated based on the insight, creativity, and interpretive power of your position; your engagement with the critical sources; your close reading, including sensitivity to textual details and frequent direct quotations from the texts; the coherence and structure of your argument; and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Students should bring three copies of the paper to class&#8212;one for the instructor, two for classmates with whom you will exchange papers.&#160; Classmates will be expected to type a page of comments and email them to the paper writer (and cc the instuctor) by class time on Friday of that week, pointing out the most significant positive and negative aspects of the paper (including both organization and content). This assignment will be considered part of your participation grade.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; All students are expected to do a substantial revision of this essay, based on the comments they receive from both students and instructor (unless you receive straight "A" on the initial version).&#160; "Substantial revision" must involve more than superficial changes to formatting, spelling, and grammar&#8212;you must rethink, reorganize, and rewrite the paper, in order to improve the content, structure, <em>and</em> style of your writing.&#160; <em>Papers turned in again without substantial revision will be given back to you once more&#160; for revision, and the final grade will be&#160; reduced one grade level</em> (i.e. A- to B+).<br/>
The first version of this paper should be a finished product, not just be a draft.&#160; To encourage you to take this first version of the paper seriously, the final grade for the paper cannot be more than one full grade higher than the original version (i.e. if you get a C on the first version, you cannot get better than a B on the final paper).</p>
<p><strong><em>Close Reading Paper(s) (10% each for two or 20% for one)</em></strong></p>
<p>Same format as discussion leading paper.&#160; Students have the option to write either two short close reading papers, due on the dates indicated in the syllabus, or one medium-length paper, due on either of the two days.&#160; Each paper should offer an extensive close reading and interpretation of a single work that we read for class, by an author about whom the student has not yet written.&#160; Papers should not merely repeat points which have already been discusses in class, but may build on class discussion in order to develop your own original interpretation.&#160; Short papers should be 2-3 pages each; the medium-length one should be 5-6 pages.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; In this paper you are expected to develop a coherent thesis or position about the text, supported by extensive close reading and quotation.&#160; You should not try to cover all themes relevant to a text, but focus on a single theme or a couple related themes and create a coherent thesis position, using the evidence that the text offers.&#160; Your paper will be evaluated based on the insight, creativity, and interpretive power of your thesis; your effective close reading and engagement with the details of the text; the coherence and structure of your paper as a whole; and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.</p>
<p><strong><em>Final Paper, 10-15 pages</em></strong> <strong>(25%)</strong></p>
<p>Same format as discussion leading paper.&#160; In your final paper, you will be asked to compare British and American texts in relation to a specific theme of your choosing.&#160; Your paper <em>must</em> include substantial commentary on <em>Moby Dick</em>, and should compare this work with at least two other texts, one British and one American, about which you have not yet written a paper (you may write on more than three texts, if you choose, including texts you have already written about, in addition to the ones which are new).&#160; Possible topics include: versions of nature; the natural and the supernatural; the problem of evil; science and its proper bounds; representations of animals; the role of the monstrous or the non-human other; individuality and society; race; the exotic; imagination; genius; domesticity vs. adventure; versions of masculinity or femininity; relation to commodity culture; the Byronic hero; social class in Romanticism, and the connection of femininity and nature (many other topics are possible).&#160; You should avoid making large, unsupported statements about British and American Romanticism in this paper, but should focus instead on developing a specific comparison between the works you have chosen.&#160;&#160;<br/>
You should support your interpretation with at least five critical sources (critical articles or parts of books), of which no more than one can be a reference work (encyclopedia entries, for instance) or peer-reviewed website.&#160; A preliminary version of this annotated bibliography, including a sentence or two about each source and its relevance, together with a brief prospectus of one or two paragraphs summarizing your&#160; proposed topic and thesis, is due Fri., Dec. 1st.&#160; Note that your final grade for the paper will be reduce one grade level if your bibliography is late (i.e. from A- to B+), and one addition grade level for each 48 hours of lateness. A final annotated bibliography of these sources should be included, in MLA format, at the end of the finished paper.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; You are expected to use critical sources in this paper in order to enrich and support your own original interpretation of the texts, much as in the position paper and discussion leading paper.&#160; With a large, comparative research paper such as this, the greatest challenge is to maintain coherence in your thesis and avoid wandering off on tangents or treating the works independently of one another.&#160; You should make your comparisons between the works explicit, and if you do make large, generalizing claims, they should be well supported by your interpretations of the texts and by critical sources.&#160; As always, your positions should be supported by extensive close reading and quotation from the text(s). Your paper will be evaluated based on the insight, creativity, and interpretive power of your thesis; your effective close reading and engagement with the details of the text; your use of the research sources; the coherence and structure of your paper as a whole; and the voice, clarity, and power of your writing.</p>
<p><strong><em>Class Participation (25%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Class participation involves good class citizenship in all its various aspects: coming to class prepared with thoughts and ideas and questions of your own about the reading; speaking in class; listening and responding to other students as well as to the instructor; and being aware of your role in the overall classroom community.&#160; Punctual and regular class attendance is also an essential, though by no means sufficient, part of participation (see below for more specific class attendance policies).&#160; See the course website for the guidelines I use in assessing your final participation grade.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Your participation grade will also include a regular weekly response assignment, to help provoke class discussion.&#160; Beginning with the Wednesday of week three, each students will be assigned one day of the week (M, W, or F), to help provoke class discussion by posting a response of some kind on Moodle [our course management software].&#160;&#160; Since your role on this day is to be a provocateur, you may even want to be deliberately outrageous, as long as it leads to significant interpretation in some way (don't be deliberately offensive, though!).&#160; You can fulfill the assignment by writing a prose paragraph or two; a question or series of questions; or some other format, such as an image.&#160; Come to class prepared to raise the issue or provocation in person.&#160; Use this assignment to respond to what interests <em>you</em> in the text, and to place that issue on the class agenda for the day.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; In order to allow the other students and instructor to be provoked into thought prior to class, you should post your response on Moodle by 5 pm on the day before class meets.&#160; If you miss this deadline, your participation grade will be reduced.&#160; You may skip two responses without penalty over the course of the semester.&#160; Responses will not receive formal grades or comments, but I will comment informally throughout the semester to let you know how you are doing.&#160; The more original, insightful, and provocative the responses, the better your participation grade (responses will constitute roughly &#188; of your total participation grade).</p></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/syllabi/index.html">Online Syllabi</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/hess-scott">Hess, Scott</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/tags/gender-roles" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gender roles</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/tags/gender" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gender</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3601" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabi</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3600" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabus</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/james-kinsley" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">James Kinsley</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/ralph-waldo-emerson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/charlotte-smith-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Smith</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/herman-melville" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Herman Melville</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/scott-hess" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Scott Hess</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/kelsey-thorton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kelsey Thorton</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/oxford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Oxford</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/america" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">America</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-naturalfeature-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NaturalFeature:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/natural-feature/haunted-beach" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Haunted Beach</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-syllabi-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Syllabi Categories:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/syllabi-categories/ecology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ecology</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:39:10 +0000rc-admin22056 at http://www.rc.umd.eduEng. 355, Spring '04: Nature, Class, and Identity in British Romanticismhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/hess/eng355.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
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<h3 align="center">Romanticism (Eng. 355), Spring '04: Nature, Class, and Identity in British Romanticism</h3>
<p><span class="epigcit">Therefore am I still</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">A lover of the meadows and the woods</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">And mountains, and of all that we behold</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">From this green earth, of all the mighty world</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Of eye and ear (both what they half-create</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">And what perceive) &#8212; well-pleased to recognize</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">In nature and the language of the sense,</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Of all my moral being.</span></p>
<p><span class="epigcit"><em>William Wordsworth, "Tintern Abbey"</em></span></p>
<h4>Instructor: Scott Hess</h4>
<p>[Note&#8212;I have published the readings, course assignments, texts, and course goals in this sample syllabus, for a class which met two times per week. I removed my course policies on attendance, late papers, and classroom etiquette. I'm a believer in spelling out assignments and expectations in syllabi as fully as possible, to be as explicit with students as possible before they begin the course.]</p>
<p><strong><u>Course Goals</u></strong></p>
<p>This course will offer a general introduction to British Romanticism, including a wide range of writers in both poetry and prose. Specifically, we will concentrate on the themes of nature, class, and identity: the way different writers, from different social classes and positions, used nature to construct their identities in different ways. "Nature" has long been identified as one of the central themes of Romantic writing, which made the non-human environment central to the construction of individual identity, meaning, and value. "Nature," however, is not the same for every writer. In order to highlight these differences, we will pay special attention to a number of poets from different social positions&#8212;including Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, Lord Byron, and John Clare&#8212;as well as novels by Jane Austen and Mary Shelley. By exploring how different Romantic writers wrote about nature in different ways, we will get a better sense both of the diversity of positions and social forces in the Romantic period, and of how different people continue to construct different versions of "nature" and identity for different reasons today.</p>
<p><strong><u>Course Texts</u></strong></p>
<p><em>Romanticism : An Anthology</em>, 2nd ed. with CD-ROM, edited by Duncan Wu and David S. Miall</p>
<p><em>Frankenstein : Or, the Modern Prometheus</em> (Oxford World's Classics), by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, edited by James Kinsley</p>
<p><em>Pride and Prejudice</em> (Oxford World's Classics), by Jane Austen, edited by James Kinsley with an introduction by Isobel Armstrong</p>
<p><em>The Poems of Charlotte Smith</em>, edited by Stuart Curran</p>
<p><em>Robert Burns</em> (Everyman Poetry Library), edited by Donald Low</p>
<p><em>John Clare</em> (Everyman Poetry Series), edited by Kelsey Thorton</p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong><u>Class Meetings and Assignments</u></strong></p>
<p>All readings in poets other than Burns, Clare, and Smith are in the Wu anthology, unless otherwise indicated.</p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 1</strong></p>
<p>Thurs. Jan. 15 Introduction and Housekeeping: in-class discussion of William Wordsworth, "I wandered lonely as a cloud"; Dorothy Wordsworth, journal entry; John Clare, "Beans in Blossom" and "The passing traveler"</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 2</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Jan. 19 Versions of Nature and The Roots of British Romanticism: Raymond Williams, "Ideas of Nature" (posted on course website); Alexander Pope, excerpts from <em>Windsor Forest</em> and <em>Epistle to Burlington</em>; excerpts from James Thomson, <em>The Seasons</em>; Anne Finch, "Nocturnal Reverie"; Thomas Gray, <em>Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard</em> (all Xeroxed handouts); we will meet in a special room to view eighteenth-century landscape designs and paintings from course website</p>
<p>Thurs. Jan. 22&#160; Robert Burns, "The Twa Dogs," "Scotch Drink," "The Holy Fair," "The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailee," "Poor Mailee's Elegy," "To J.S ****," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "To a Mouse," "To a Mountain Daisy" (all in <em>Robert Burns</em>); "A Vision," "John Barleycorn" (handouts)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 3</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Jan. 26&#160; Burns, "To a Louse," "Epistle to J. L****K," "Song 'It was upon a Lammas night,'" "Song, 'Now Westlin' Winds,'" "A Bard's Epitaph," "Holy Willie's Prayer," "Tam o' Shanter" (all in <em>Robert Burns</em>); "Is There for Honest Poverty," "Green Grow the Rushes," "The Banks 'o Doon," "Scots Wha Hae," "A Red Red Rose" (handouts)</p>
<p>Thurs. Jan. 29&#160; Jane Austen, <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>, Volume I (pp. 1-101)</p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 4</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Feb. 2 Austen, <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>, Volume II and start of Volume III (pp. 103-206)</p>
<b>Presentation: the English aristocracy and gentry</b>
<p>Thurs. Feb. 5 Austen, <em>Pride and Prejudice</em>, finish Volume III (pp. 206-98)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 5</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Feb. 9&#160; William Blake, <em>Songs of Innocence</em> and <em>Songs of Experience</em> in their entirety (in Wu, pp. 60-84)</p>
<p>Tues. Feb. 10&#160; First paper, on identity and society in Burns and Austen, 5-6 pages, due by 3 pm at Scott H.'s office</p>
<p>Thurs. Feb. 12&#160; William Wordsworth, from <em>Lyrical Ballads</em>, "Simon Lee," "We are Seven," "Lines Written in Early Spring," "The Thorn" (see also note on poem, p. 344), "The Last of the Flock," "Expostulation and Reply," "The Tables Turned," "Old Man Traveling," "Tintern Abbey"; also <em>The Ruined Cottage</em>, <em>The Pedlar</em>, all excerpts from "Preface to <em>Lyrical Ballads</em>" (pp. 357-63)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 6</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Feb. 16&#160; William Wordsworth, "The Discharged Soldier," "There was a Boy," "Nutting," "Strange Fits of Passion," "Song, 'She Dwelt Among th'untrodden Ways,'" "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal," "Three Years She Grew," "Prospectus to 'the Recluse,'" "I Travelled Among Unknown Men," "Resolution and Independence," "The World is Too Much With Us," "1 September 1802," "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," "London 1802," "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," "Daffodils," "The Solitary Reaper," "Elegiac Stanzas"&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Presentation: the French Revolution and its impacts in England</strong></p>
<p><strong>[Mid-Semester Break, Feb. 19-22]</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 7</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Feb. 23&#160; Dorothy Wordsworth, all journal entries and poems in Wu anthology plus handout poems</p>
<p>Thurs. Feb. 26&#160; William Wordsworth, <em>Two-Part Prelude</em> (pp. 300-23); excerpts from 1805 <em>Prelude</em>, "Glad Preamble" (pp. 329-30), "Crossing the Alps" (pp. 389-92), "The London Beggar" (p. 392), "Paris, December 1791" (pp. 394-96), "Beaupuy" (pp. 396-98), "Godwinism" (pp. 398-99), "Confusion and Recovery" (pp. 399-401), "Climbing of Snowdon" (pp. 401-405)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 8</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Mar. 1&#160; Charlotte Smith, Introduction and all Prefaces (pp. xix-12); <em>Elegiac Sonnets</em> I, IV, V, VIII, XII, XXXV, XLIIII, LIX,&#160; LXII, LXX, LXXVII, LXXXIII, LXXXVI; and "Thirty-Eight" (pp. 92-94) (all in <em>The Poems of Charlotte Smith</em>)</p>
<p><strong>Presentation: Woman writers during the Romantic period</strong></p>
<p>Thurs. Mar. 4&#160; Smith, <em>The Emigrants</em>, including Preface (pp. 131-63)</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 9</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Mar. 8&#160; Smith, "Beachy Head," including "Advertisement" (pp. 215-47)</p>
<p>View and discuss Romantic landscape paintings from course website</p>
<p>Wed., Mar. 10, Second paper, on constructions of "nature" in William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Charlotte Smith, 5-6 pages, due by 3 pm at Scott H.'s office</p>
<p>Thurs. Mar. 11&#160; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Eolian Harp," "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," and "Frost at Midnight" (read versions on pp. 549-55), "Kubla Khan" (read version on pp. 522-24, with introductory material), "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "Dejection: an Ode" (read version on pp. 528-48), and "To William Wordsworth" (pp. 514-17)</p>
<p><strong>[Spring Break, March 13-21]</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 10</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Mar. 22&#160; Lord Byron, "She Walks in Beauty," "When We Two Parted," "Fare Thee Well," "Stanzas to Augusta," "Epistle to Augusta," "Darkness," "So We'll Go No More A-Roving," "On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year," <em>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</em> Canto III stanzas 1-16, 69-75, 88-97, and 111-18 (pp. 672-76, 692-94, 698-701, 705-8)</p>
<p>Thurs. Mar. 25&#160; Byron, <em>Manfred</em> (pp. 718-51)</p>
<p><strong>Presentation: the Byronic Hero and its legacy</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 11</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Mar. 29&#160; Byron, <em>Don Juan</em>, Dedication and Canto I (pp. 752-85)</p>
<p>Thurs. Apr. 1&#160; P. B. Shelley, "To Wordsworth," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," "Mont Blanc," "Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," <em>The Mask of Anarchy</em>, "England in 1819," "To a Skylark"; <em>Adonais</em>, stanzas LII-LV only (pp. 972-73); excerpts from <em>Defense of Poetry</em>, pp. 944 through first full paragraph on 946, middle of p. 952 to end (p. 956)</p>
<p><strong>Presentation: society and politics in the Regency period; Shelley's neo-Platonism and radicalism</strong></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 12</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Apr. 5 Mary Shelley, <em>Frankenstein</em>, including Shelley's Introduction, opening letters, and chapters 1-17 (pp. 5-149)</p>
<p><strong>Presentation: sciences during the Romantic period</strong></p>
<p>Thurs. Apr. 8 Mary Shelley, finish <em>Frankenstein</em> (pp.149-223)</p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 13</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Apr. 12 &#160;Felicia Hemans, all poems in Wu anthology (pp. 990-1004) plus handouts</p>
<p>Thurs. Apr. 15 John Keats, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "Lamia," all letters on pp. 1018-19, 1020-22, 1042 and in class handout</p>
<p><b>Presentation: Romantic Hellenism and aestheticism</b></p>
<p><strong>&#160;</strong></p>
<p><strong>Week 14</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Apr. 19&#160; Keats, all odes, including "To Autumn" (Wu, pp. 1056-64, 1080); John Clare, excerpts from <em>The Shepherd's Calendar</em> from January and June, "To the Snipe," and "The Badger" (in Wu); "Summer Evening" (handout); "The Wren," "Sonnet: The Crow," "The Skylark," "Sonnet: 'Among the orchard weeds,'" "The Landrail," "The Nightingale's Nest," "The Yellowhammer's Nest," "The Pettichap's Nest," "Sonnets: the Hedgehog," "Little Trotty Wagtail" (in <em>John Clare</em>)</p>
<p>Thurs. Apr. 22&#160; Clare, "Sonnet: 'The barn door is open,'" "The Wheat Ripening," "The Beans in Blossom," "Sonnet: 'The passing traveler,'" "Sport in the Meadows," "Emmonsales Heath," 'The Summer Shower," "The Foddering Boy," "The Gipsy Camp," "The Cottager," "Remembrances," "The Flitting," "The Lament of Swordy Well," "The Moors" (in <em>John Clare</em>)</p>
<p>Fri. Apr. 23, prospectus&#160; and annotated bibliography for final research project, due by 10 am by email</p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Week 15</strong></p>
<p>Mon. Apr. 26&#160; Clare, "An Invite to Eternity," "I Am," "A Vision," "The Peasant Poet," "Sighing for Retirement," "Song's Eternity," "The Eternity of Nature," 'To be Placed at the Back of his Portrait" (in <em>John Clare</em>); excerpts from <em>Child Harold</em> (handout)</p>
<p><strong>Sun. May 2, Final research paper due on subject of your choice, 8-12 pages, due by 8 pm at Scott H.'s office</strong></p>
<p><strong>no final exam</strong></p>
<h3>Written Assignments &amp; Evaluation</h3>
<p>Your final grade will be calculated from the following percentages:</p>
<div class="table"><span class="tableleft">course evaluation<br/>
first paper, on Austen and Burns<br/>
second paper, on the Wordsworths and Smith<br/>
class presentation and discussion leading<br/>
paper on class presentation materials<br/>
final research paper<br/>
class participation (including responses)</span> <span class="tablemid">0% (but required)<br/>
10%<br/>
15%<br/>
5%<br/>
15%<br/>
25%<br/>
30%</span></div>
<p>Note: all papers should be printed in 12 point font, double spaced, with 1 inch margins on all sides. Papers should be carefully proofread, and should be free of obvious grammatical and spelling errors: sloppy work will be penalized by reduction in the overall paper grade.</p>
<p><strong><em>&#160;</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Course Evaluation (0%, but required)</em></strong></p>
<p>In order to receive a grade in this course, you will need to evaluate the design of the course and the quality of instruction you have received. Consider that you are acting on behalf of future Earlham students who will take this class or other classes from the instructor. Please be thoughtful, rigorous, and as specific as possible.</p>
<p><strong><em>Class Participation, including weekly responses/ questions (30%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Class participation involves good class citizenship in all its various aspects: coming to class prepared with thoughts and ideas and questions of your own about the reading; speaking in class; listening and responding to other students as well as to the instructor; and being aware of your role in and effect on the overall classroom community. Punctual and regular class attendance is also an essential, though by no means sufficient, part of participation&#160; (see below for more specific class attendance policies). I will pass out a sheet of participation grade criteria in class, to give you a better sense of the guidelines for assessing your final participation grade.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Your class participation will include a weekly response assignment, which you will be asked to hand in beginning on the Thursday of week two and continuing through week fourteen. Each student will be assigned either Mondays or Thursdays to do the response assignment. I will ask you to email me (or drop off in my door) at least one substantial paragraph of response, by 10 am on the morning before class, on what you think is most interesting, provocative, or worthy of discussion from that day's reading. Your response should include a question or questions for class discussion, or some indication of what you'd like to discuss in class that day. It should refer to some specifics of the reading (i.e. quote or refer to a specific incident or poem), and it should be coherent and focused on a single issue or cluster of related issues. Though your response is not expected to be polished, you should read it over and make sure your ideas are clearly expressed, without obvious typos or grammatical errors. I will not grade or comment on responses, but will use them in class discussion (so come to class ready to talk about your response). You will be allowed to skip two responses without penalty (just tell me by the time of class that you are taking the week off). Other than those two responses you are allowed to skip, you will be penalized 2% of your total participation grade for each late response, and 5% of your total participation grade for each response not handed in the day it is due. The quality of your engagement with the readings in the responses will count as part of your overall class participation grade.</p>
<p><strong><em>First Paper, on identity and society in Burns and Austen, 5-6 pages (10%)</em></strong></p>
<p>[Note to Romantic Pedagogies readers&#8212;this assignment proved too complicated and difficult for a first paper, and did not work well]</p>
<p>Your first paper should compare some aspect of the construction of identity and society in Burns' poetry and Austen's novel. You will need to find a focused topic within this general subject area. The exact choice of topic is up to you, but topics might include: sense of morality or underlying moral values; perspectives on the working or lower classes, or on the aristocracy; class relations or hierarchy; social ideals, which might include overall models of society; the relation of the individual to society and the value of individualism; possibilities for personal freedom; importance of social conformity; the role of satire and social critique; religion; and relations between the sexes. You should quote frequently from the texts to support your argument, and your paper should have a coherent central thesis. Your paper should go beyond positions already expressed in class discussion, though you can refer to that discussion and use such points to help support your thesis (talk with me if you have any questions about this requirement). The paper will be evaluated on your ability to compare the texts effectively and make insightful and creative connections between them; the insight and originality of your argument; your ability to support a coherent thesis with well-chosen and skillfully deployed evidence from the texts; and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.</p>
<p><em><b>Second Paper, on constructions of "nature" in the Wordsworth and Smith, 5-6 pages (15%)</b></em></p>
<p>As in your first paper, the second paper asks you to compare texts by (at least) two authors, this time in relation to how they represent "nature" or the environment. You should write on at least one text by William Wordsworth, and at least one text by either Dorothy Wordsworth or Charlotte Smith (you may write on all three if you want). You may want to make allusions to other texts we have read to support your argument, but the paper should focus on no more than three texts, and should concentrate on close readings of those texts in relation to your chosen issue and thesis. As with the first paper, the exact topic and thesis is up to you, but possible topics include: how "nature" is used to construct individual identity or a certain model of society; the role of "home" or other people in the description of the environment; the role of labor or the working classes; how the construction of "nature" supports other ideas or social positions; connections between nature and gender; and the politics of nature in the various texts. Your paper will want to compare the ways these different writers represent the environment, but it should go beyond this initial comparison to make an argument for how these differences are significant. You should <em>not</em> write on poems we have already discussed extensively in class, though you can include references to these poems and to our discussion of them. As always in an interpretive paper, you should quote frequently from the texts and have a coherent central thesis. This paper will be evaluated according to the same criteria as the first one.</p>
<p><strong><em>Class Presentation and Discussion Leading (5%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Students will be assigned in teams to give a brief presentation and lead discussion on one of the class days indicated on the syllabus, on the listed theme for that day. You should begin the class period with a brief presentation of your research, in order to give an overview of that topic. The presentation should be between 10 and 15 minutes long, but should not go over time (I will cut you off at 18 minutes, so plan your presentation and rehearse carefully in advance). Depending on your topic, you may want to make specific connections with the text(s) we are reading.<br/>
After the presentation, your group will lead class discussion for at least the next half hour (you can lead for as much of the remaining time as you like). This discussion should use or build from the research presentation in a significant way, though it may also address other issues not directly related to the topic of the presentation. Your group must also turn in an annotated bibliography of research sources at the end of class after the presentation, which must include at least four sources, at least three of which must be scholarly books or articles, and at least two of which must be in print (as opposed to electronic form). No more than one of these sources should be a general reference work (such as an encyclopedia). The annotated bibliography should have a sentence or two for each source, describing its content and usefulness as a source and, if relevant, its scholarly reliability or bias. You should use standard MLA endnote style (see information through the library website).<br/>
Your presentation will be graded on its clarity, organization, content, and connection to the text(s) we are reading, and on your annotated bibliography. Class discussion leading will be graded on your sense of organization and overall plan for the class; the insight and creativity of this plan in helping the class to interpret the reading(s); your ability to build off your presentation in a significant way; and your good faith effort to involve the rest of the class in active participation (if you have a well-conceived plan to stimulate class participation, it won't count against you if the class doesn't respond well on that particular day). You are encouraged to lead the class in creative activities other than general class discussion if you like (i.e. small group work; in-class writing or role playing; use of other media such as drawing or acting; etc.), as long as these activities involve active participation by class members and lead to significant dialogue and insight about the text.If you use a creative format, you must also use part of the class to call attention to how it helps us interpret the readings. All members of the group are expected to be involved significantly in both the presentation and class discussion leading, and failure to do so will effect your overall group grade for this assignment.</p>
<p><strong><em>Paper on Class Presentation Materials, 5-6 pages (15%)</em></strong></p>
<p>You will be expected to write a paper on the materials you presented and discussed in class, due by noon one week after the day on which you presented. This paper should be on a theme of your choice, but it should interpret some of the readings for that day in relation to the research context you presented. The paper is not just expected to be a report of your research, but should use that research in order to support an interpretation of the literary text(s) that brings extra insight to the text(s). I will be glad to discuss possible theses with you after your presentation. You may either choose to write this paper together as a group, or independently as individuals. If you write as a group, you will receive a single grade for the entire group. You are especially encouraged for this paper to use points that came up during class discussion. In fact, part of the purpose of the combined assignment is to allow you to shape class discussion to explore themes that you want to write more about in the paper. The paper will be evaluated on your use of research to support and develop your own interpretation of the text(s) in insightful and creative ways; the coherence and effectiveness of your thesis; your ability to support that thesis with careful close reading and quotation from the text(s); and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.</p>
<p><strong><em>Final Research Paper, 8-12 pages (25%)</em></strong></p>
<p>Your final research paper should be on a topic of your own choice, related in some way to issues of nature, class, and identity and focusing on at least one of the text(s) we read during the class. You may also bring in other texts, if you want; and you are welcome to make connection to contemporary issues, as long as your paper remains grounded in interpretation of Romantic period texts. You may choose to develop one of your earlier papers into this final paper, if you like, which will of course include substantial rewriting.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Your research paper should use at least five secondary critical sources, at least four of which must be scholarly books and/or articles (and no more than one of which should be a general reference source, such as an encyclopedia). You may choose to use web material as a fifth source, provided it has scholarly credibility (talk to the instructor or the class library liaison for help on assessing credibility). You may of course use more than five sources, as your project requires. Don't forget about books on reserve, which you can take out for up to three days.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; Your paper can use your source material in various ways, depending on your chosen topic and thesis, to provide a historical or other significant context or to establish other critical positions from which your own argument builds. In any case, your paper should <em>not</em> just state the research; it needs to use that research to construct your own original argument, with a coherent thesis supported by your own close reading and interpretation of the text(s). Your paper will be evaluated on your ability to accomplish these aims, as well as on the structure and coherence of your argument and the overall voice, clarity, and power of your writing.<br/>
&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; To help you get started on this paper in advance, you will be required to email a paper prospectus, including a preliminary prospectus and annotated bibliography, to the instructor by 10 am on Friday, April 23. The prospectus should include your proposed thesis and a brief overview of your argument or planned approach to the topic, and should be about a page long all together (note that your thesis and argument may change as you continue to think and write). The annotated bibliography should be in the same format as the one for the class presentation. <strong>Note that your final research paper grade will be reduced one grade level (i.e. from B to B-) if your prospectus is late and one full grade (i.e. from B to C) if the prospectus is more than 72 hours late, so be sure to turn it in on time!&#160;</strong> You should use standard MLA endnote style for formatting your bibliography, citations, and endnotes (see information through the library website).</p>
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</table></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/syllabi/index.html">Online Syllabi</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/hess-scott">Hess, Scott</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1639" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nature</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/613" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">class</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3601" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabi</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3600" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabus</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/duncan-wu-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Duncan Wu</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/robert-burns-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Robert Burns</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/charlotte-smith-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Smith</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jane-austen" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jane Austen</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/mary-wollstonecraft-shelley-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-naturalfeature-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NaturalFeature:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/natural-feature/windsor-forest" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Windsor Forest</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/natural-feature/mountain-daisy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mountain Daisy</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-syllabi-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Syllabi Categories:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/syllabi-categories/drama" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Drama</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:38:52 +0000rc-admin22055 at http://www.rc.umd.eduRomanticism, Nature, Ecologyhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/harrison/harrison.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h2>Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</h2>
<h4>Gary Harrison, University of New Mexico</h4>
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<p align="center"><b>I: Introduction</b></p>
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<p>The connection between Romanticism and ecology has often been recognized in the critical literature on Romanticism and in the writings of ecologists and naturalists. Recently Jonathan Bate, Karl Kroeber, Jim McKusick, Onno Oerlemans, and Kate Rigby have published important books on the subject,<a href="#1" name="ret1">[1]</a> and <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i>, <i>Studies in Romanticism</i>, and <a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/">Romantic Circles Praxis Series</a> have published special issues on the topic.<a href="#2" name="ret2">[2]</a>&#160;By and large, these books and the articles in the collections argue that we can trace the origins of our current ecological thinking to European Romanticism in general, and sometimes to British and American Romanticism in particular. A similar trend to link various strands of our current environmental thinking to Romantic ur-texts may be found in the works of environmental historians, geographers, and environmentalists, such as Neal Evernden, Max Oelschlager, I. G. Simmons, and Donald Worster, among others. In Worster's <i>Nature's Economy</i>, a key history of ecological thought, we read that "at the very core of [the] Romantic view of nature was what later generations would come to call an ecological perspective: that is, a search for holistic or integrated perception, an emphasis on interdependence and relatedness in nature, and an intense desire to restore man to a place of intimate intercourse with the vast organism that constitutes the earth"&#160;&#160; (82). More recently, in his introduction to "Romanticism and Ecology," a special issue of <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i>, Jim McKusick pointedly and rightly, I think, claims that "much Romantic writing emerges from a desperate sense of alienation from the natural world and expresses an anxious endeavor to re-establish a vital, sustainable relationship between mankind and the fragile planet on which [we] dwell" (123). These statements point to a position that
many recent writers have defended, albeit from divergent and importantly nuanced perspectives: Romantic literature is a germinal site for the rise of ecological consciousness and practices.</p>
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<p>The affiliation between Romanticism and ecology nonetheless remains problematic. On the one hand, Romantic nature philosophy has been linked, as in Luc Ferry's <i>The New Ecological Order</i>, with oppressive and totalitarian political dispositions. On the other hand, Romanticism has been reduced to a simplistic nostalgia for a lost unity with nature, or worse, as a rhapsodic celebration of beautiful scenery. In reply to such critics as Ferry, Val Plumwood in <i>Environmental Culture</i> reminds us that "While it is important to note the role of those forms of Romanticism corrupted by the desire for unity and other oppressive forces, any analysis which puts all its stress on this factor ignores the diversity and liberatory aspects of some forms of Romanticism. . . . " (208). In response to the reductive view of Romanticism as nature worship, William Cronon and Paul Fry, among others, remind us that Romantic representations of nature reflect not so much actual places and encounters as virtual landscapes and experiences that mirror their writers' projected desires and culturally mediated values. Cronon's "The Trouble With Wilderness," for example, cites Wordsworth's description of the Simplon Pass experience (<i>Prelude</i>, Book 6) and Thoreau's account of climbing Mt. Ktaadn to point up what he calls the "unnaturalness" of natural places rendered through the Romantic eye, informed as it is with Judaeo-Christian ideas of the wilderness and Kantian notions of the sublime (73). Moreover, as Ralph Pite warns in "How Green were the Romantics," while it is important and productive to link Romanticism with ecology, doing so often leads to oversimplifications and confusion, in that Romantic poetry may be used "to support any number of different [and one might add mutually contradictory] versions of ecology" (317);&#160; Pite believes that&#160; our definition of "green poetry" may become so broad or so restrictive a category that the term becomes unworkable (359). One
of the objectives of the course sketched out below is to problematize our understanding of the Romantic apprehension and representation of nature, so that we begin to account for its intertextual and cultural mediations even as we recognize its more or less genuine, but nonetheless partial and vexed,&#160; attempt to grasp the natural world with as much immediacy and transparency as language will allow, and&#160; its effort to articulate a dynamic reciprocity between human beings and the natural world.<br/></p>
<div align="center"><b>II: Romanticism, Nature, Ecology: The Course</b><br/></div>
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<li>The course described here is designed to study the relationship between Romantic literature&#8212;especially that of the Wordsworths, Coleridge, and Clare&#8212;and the environment. Drawing upon a few key philosophical texts from the seventeenth through the early nineteenth centuries, as well as from present-day critical works of ecological literary criticism, environmental literature, and philosophy, the course encourages reflection upon what constitutes environmental literature, how such literature shapes environmental consciousness and action, and how Romantic poetry engages urgent issues that face us today about the relationship between human consciousness and nature, and about the structures of consciousness and feeling that predispose us to act in certain ways within our environment. Rather than turn to Romanticism as a guide to current environmental practices, our interest is in Romanticism as a site for the emergence of ecopoetics and as a discourse that opens up critical questions and lines of investigation about our&#160; human place in the life world. [<a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/harrison/EcoRomanticSyll.html">SEE SYLLABUS</a>]</li>
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<p>The course is divided into four units of varying lengths: I: Introduction and Outline of Problem; II: Nature and Culture; III: Romantic Aesthetics and Nature; and IV: Romanticism, Nature, Ecology. Using the concept of "discursive clusters," sets of works that approach certain topics from a variety of perspectives in order to promote discussion and sometimes to orchestrate a kind of imaginary conversation among works, each unit includes a series of primary readings for each week, accompanied by a pair of "Critical Works" that either critically and sometimes historically contextualize the issues and ideas raised in the primary readings. Unit I focuses on Michel Serres's <i>The Natural Contract</i>, which presents a critical view of the breach of contract that characterizes our current relationship to the life world. Underscoring the critical importance of recalibrating our relationship to the natural world, <i>The Natural Contract</i> inaugurates the course with a sense of urgency that may persuade students to make a serious intellectual investment in the explorations that will follow.&#160;&#160; Unit II offers a brief genealogical perspective on Romantic nature philosophy and ecopoetics in the context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. Reading selections from Francis Bacon, Ren&#233; Descartes, Denis Diderot, and Jean Jacques Rousseau, we spend two weeks discussing enlightenment ideas about mechanism, dualism, the wild, the primitive, and the noble savage. Unit III introduces Edmund Burke, Immanuel Kant, and William Gilpin as the major architects of the beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque, mechanisms that at least in part structure our perceptions of and responses to the natural world.</p>
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<p>Having established some of the key concepts that inform early nineteenth-century dispositions toward the environment, Unit IV moves to the heart of the course: the poetry and prose of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Clare&#8212;along with some other writers, such as Thomas Malthus and Charlotte Smith. Taking up more than half of the course, this unit considers the various ways these writers theorize and represent the sense of interdependence between human beings and nature, the reciprocal bond that anticipates Serres's idea of the natural contract, and&#160; agency&#8212;both natural and human. Drawing from a variety of "Critical Works"&#8212;by writers from Geoffrey Hartman and Jonathan Bate to Aldo Leopold and Walker Percy&#8212;throughout this unit we use discursive clusters to challenge the reductive stereotypes of Romanticism either as a will to power and mastery or as a nostalgic and simple love for nature. Moreover, we discuss the way Romanticism reacts against, transforms, and sometimes perpetuates some of the modes of perception and understanding it inherited from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.</p>
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<p>Note: The course described here is designed for upper-division undergraduates or first-year graduate students who have some acquaintance with British and ideally American or European Romanticism as well. Students who have taken a form of this course have noted in their teaching evaluations that the reading load is challenging, while at the same time they have generally praised the course for being comprehensive and opening up multiple and divergent perspectives on Romanticism and ecology. Because of its modular design, the course can easily be modified to adjust the contents and/or the pace of the course. By dropping units two and/or three, for example, the course could focus more directly upon&#160; the literary texts, which could be supplemented by works from other writers, such as Ann Radcliffe, Byron, the Shelleys (<i>Frankenstein</i>, for example, teaches very well alongside Serres's <i>The Natural Contract</i>), and, to flesh out American Romanticism and ecology, Emerson, Thoreau, and Susan Cooper, among others. To recover some of the historical and philosophical background lost in that trade off, students might be asked to give individual or seminar-style presentations or to participate in focus-group discussions every two or three weeks. Another way to simplify the course would be to scale back some of the critical readings assigned for each week.</p>
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<p><b>Unit I: Introduction and Outline of Problem</b> focuses on the first two chapters of Michel Serres's <i>The Natural Contract</i> which critique our contemporary environmental predicament and bring a sense of urgency to the&#160; questions and issues we will discuss throughout the class. Serres brilliantly interprets Goya's <i>Men Fighting with Cudgels</i> as a visual metaphor for the struggle between nature and culture, invoking this binary polarization in order to problematize it later in his text. For Serres, the two antagonists of Goya's painting represent history. As they fight, they remain oblivious to the bog into which they are sinking, and which represents nature. If the two men keep fighting and continue to ignore nature, they will eventually succumb to it. Thus nature, the world-wide system of objects and living things upon which humanity depends for its survival, will emerge from its subordinated position as a neglected third term and become a force which the men, perhaps putting down their own differences, will have to acknowledge, or with which they will have to reckon. For Serres, we are at or near that point of reckoning, and to preclude the eventuality of a serious catastrophe, Serres calls for a contract between humanity and nature&#8212;a contract, in part modeled after Rousseau's social contract, that will acknowledge nature as a fully-fledged partner in a community of agents with reciprocal and equal rights to protection under the law. A natural contract self-consciously guaranteeing the rights of symbiosis would offer a mutually beneficial alternative to the parasitic relationship that collective humanity now holds with Nature in its totality.</p>
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<p>Serres's analysis leads us directly to the questions about interdependence, holism, agency, and reciprocity that we will find in Malthus, the Wordsworths, Coleridge, and Clare. Like Malthus, Serres reminds us of nature's under-acknowledged power to wage war against humanity, and like Wordsworth he questions what it means to acknowledge the natural world effectively and meaningfully so as to foster a mutually beneficial relationship. Establishing the urgent need for a natural contract based upon the self-conscious acknowledgement of and love for Nature, which Serres recognizes as a creative and destructive, dynamic and indifferent force, <i>The Natural Contract</i> may encourage students to begin their reading of Romantic texts with a sense of the legacies of Romantic nature philosophy and the need to refigure the metaphors we use to construct our relationship to nature.</p>
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<p>Because Serres does not deal explicitly with ecocriticism or ecopoetics, I ask students to read the introductory chapters of three important books of environmental criticism: Jonathan Bate's <i>The Song of the Earth</i>, Lawrence Buell's <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>, and Jim McKusick's <i>Green Writing</i>. Placing these three books into play highlights the overlapping issues of ecocriticism, establishing some grounds for the students' own thinking and writing. First, Bate's introduction challenges the binary opposition between nature and culture, using Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy to tease out the ways that culture is always already imbedded in nature, just as nature is always already imbedded in culture. Along the way, in a brief sketch of the transformations from the old to the new England, Bate adumbrates key points that will orient students within the field of ecocriticism. Bate's introduction also offers a definition of "environment"; examines the distinction between organic and mechanic; and shows how operative terms and concepts in environmental discourse, such as organicism, tradition, continuity, and nature, have been appropriated for competing political and ideological purposes. Second, Buell's introduction offers a rationale for ecocriticism, suggesting that as critics, readers and writers we need to draw upon the anticipatory imaginings from a broad range of literary, cultural, and social texts in order to remake our relationship to the environment. Buell also introduces and defines key terms, such as ecocentrism, anthropocentrism, and the "environmental text," and discusses the gendering of nature and the hitherto peripheral place of nature writing in the canon of British and especially American literature. While the course concentrates on early British Romanticism, frequently drawing upon Buell's <i>Environmental Imagination</i> allows us to discuss the transnational character of Romantic ecology. Buell's analysis of Thoreau, Emerson,
Susan Cooper, Mary Austin and others offers a model for our own practice, and it creates a kind of cultural dissonance that throws our reading of the British Romantic texts into a fresh perspective. Finally, McKusick's introduction also addresses the relationship between British and American romanticism and environmentalism, emphasizing the way that American nature writers&#8212;from Ralph Waldo Emerson through Mary Austin&#8212;seem strategically to ignore or forget the influence of British Romanticism on American nature writing. Arguing that we need to repair the bridge between British and American environmental writing, McKusick points to the common threads these traditions share about culture and nature, humanity, and the environment. In conjunction with <i>The Natural Contract</i>, these introductory chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the operative concepts, terms, and cultural-historical connections that will frame our investigations and discussions throughout the class.</p>
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<p><b>Unit II: Nature and Culture</b> assembles a discursive cluster that brings together&#160; Francis Bacon's <i>The New Atlantis</i>, Ren&#233;e Descartes' <i>Discourse on Method</i> and <i>Meditations on First Philosophy</i>, along with Carolyn Merchant's "Dominion Over Nature," Donald Worster's "The Empire of Reason," Jonathan Bate's "The State of Nature," and Hayden White's "The Forms of Wildness." This unit provides a critical overview of the history of mechanism and dualism from the seventeenth century up to the Romantic era. If there is not time to read all of <i>The New Atlantis</i>, the final section on the House of Salomon suffices to give students a sense of the secretive technologies of mastery over nature that characterize Bacon's mechanistic view of nature. "Dominion Over Nature," chapter seven of Merchant's <i>The Death of Nature</i>, offers a classic critique of Bacon's text, setting it in the context of the witch trials of the sixteenth century and treating it as a pivotal point in the transformation of nature from a benevolent nurturing mother to an objectified and demonized female figure&#8212;a witch&#8212;whose secrets could only be extracted by means of domination and torture. The selections from Descartes bring into view the origin of the <i>cogito</i>, the critical moment when the Western mind reasserts its separation from matter, as well as Descartes's unfortunate claim that animals are little more than unfeeling machines. Contrasting to, but reinforcing, Merchant's analysis,&#160; "The Empire of Reason," chapter two of&#160; Worster's <i>Nature's Economy</i>, describes how mechanism and dualism promoted a masculinist and imperialist view of nature as a feminized object to be exploited for the benefit of man.</p>
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<p>In the second week we examine eighteenth-century ideas of primitivism, the noble savage, and the divide between nature and culture in Diderot's "Supplement to <i>Bougainville's Travels</i>" and Rousseau's <i>Discourse on Inequality</i>. Diderot's "Supplement" is an imaginary travel narrative and philosophical dialogue based upon Diderot's reading of Louis Antoine de Bougainville's <i>Voyage around the World</i> (1771). Using the customs of Tahiti&#160; (as reported by Bougainville and augmented by Diderot's imagination) as his representative for natural law, Diderot sets up a dichotomy between the "Artificial Man," personified by a European almoner tormented by the conflict between his sense of religious and moral propriety and his desire to give in to his natural sexuality, and the "Natural Man," personified by a Tahitian chieftain, Orou, who points out the folly and hypocrisy of European customs that deny the most natural and compelling of human desires. Thus, the "Supplement" anticipates the Romantic revolt against mechanism as it constructs nature, albeit an exotic version of nature, as the ground of fundamental laws and truths uncorrupted by civilization and culture. Hayden White's "The Forms of Wildness" sets the idea of the exotic other as noble savage or wild man into historical context and helps us to understand Diderot's treatment of the Noble Savage myth as a projection of European fantasies and as an idealized version of the Wild Man representing everything that is outside of and opposed to the values of advanced civilization.<a href="#3" name="ret3" title="">[3]</a>&#160;White's essay provides a strong transition to the discussion of Rousseau's primitivism in the second Discourse that follows.</p>
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<p>Rousseau's <i>Discourse on Inequality</i> similarly projects certain fantasies of simplicity onto his idea of man in a state of nature and tracks the increasing alienation of the individual subject as human beings formed communities, developed systems of government and exchange, invented language, and gradually subordinated their autonomy and self-sufficiency to the trappings of civilization. Bate's "The State of Nature," chapter two of <i>The Song of the Earth</i>, places Rousseau's thought in historical context and explains his contribution to the definition of "nature," thereby making a persuasive case for Rousseau's importance to Romantic ecology. (Two other critical texts that could broaden the discussion of mechanism, primitivism, nature, and gender in this unit include Susan Bordo's "The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought," a still fascinating and important analysis of Cartesian despair and the gendering of the <i>cogito</i>, as well as Shane Phelan's "Intimate Distance," an interrogation of Rousseau's view of nature in the <i>Discourse on Inequality</i>.)&#160; Understanding now how mechanism, dualism, and primitivism function as discursive forms that mediate our understanding of and relationship to the natural world, we are ready to proceed to another set of mediations: the sublime, the beautiful, and the picturesque.</p>
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<p><b>Unit III: Romantic Aesthetics and Nature</b> brings together Burke, Kant, Gilpin, Schiller, Wordsworth and Coleridge, along with critical essays by Jonathan Bate, Walker Percy, Arnold Berleant, Christopher Hitt, Lawrence Buell, and Neal Evernden. The centerpiece of this unit is, of course, the comparison between Burke's and Kant's ideas of&#160; the sublime and beautiful. On the beautiful, we read Parts 1 and 3 of Burke's <i>A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful</i> alongside selections from the First Book Kant's <i>Critique of the Power of&#160; Judgment</i>; on the sublime, Part 2 of Burke's <i>Enquiry</i> &#160;and the sections on the mathematical and dynamic sublime from the Second Book of Kant's <i>Critique</i>. We also read a few brief excerpts from Gilpin's <i>Three Essays on the Picturesque</i> to introduce this critically important aesthetic category. (While Gilpin stands in as the representative of the picturesque, I acknowledge the limits involved in such an oversimplification of this complex and conflicted theory.)&#160; Bringing Theodor Adorno's analysis of the aestheticization of nature to bear on a critique of aesthetic, particularly picturesque, mediations of nature,&#160; Jonathan Bate's "The Picturesque Environment," chapter five of <i>The Song of the Earth</i>, provides a point of departure for our discussion. After introducing the sublime, beautiful and picturesque, we place Schiller's <i>On the Naive and Sentimental</i> in conversation with Wordsworth's Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> and Coleridge's <i>Biographia Literaria</i>. Schiller's ideas on the na&#239;ve and sentimental offer a post-Kantian revision of dualism in which nature serves as an important agency to foster human self-realization&#8212;the <i>via negativa</i>, which will re-emerge in our later discussions of Wordsworth and Charlotte Smith.</p>
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<p>To problematize the question of aesthetic mediation, we read Walker Percy's "The Loss of Creature," a powerful critique (<i>a la</i> post-Heideggerian phenomenology) of the way systems of representation deprive us of direct experience of the world&#8212;natural objects, places, works of art. In Percy's words, the overdetermined "symbolic complex" through which we usually encounter the natural world denies us the "sovereign discovery" of the thing before us&#8212;whether that thing be the Grand Canyon, a dead dogfish, a Shakespearean sonnet, or, we might add, Tintern Abbey or the River Wye (47). Percy's essay questions the difference between authentic experience and experience as a form of authentication or validation; as such, it provides critical framework from which to analyze the way aesthetic categories and practices set up ways of seeing that may do as much to thwart or distort, rather than enhance, our engagement with the natural world. His emphasis upon tourism is particularly poignant in reference to Gilpin's picturesque traveler with his or her scripted itineraries.</p>
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<p>To supplement our readings of Burke and Kant on the beautiful and the sublime, I ask students to read Arnold Berleant's "The Aesthetics of Art and Nature" and Christopher Hitt's "Toward an Ecological Sublime." The first of these essays treats the Kantian sublime as a model from which to develop an ambient aesthetics of nature. Berleant hopes to inaugurate a shift from a Kantian model of disinterested contemplation&#160; to one of a sensuous, participatory immersion in nature: "Perceiving environment from within . . . looking not <i>at</i> it but being <i>in</i> it" nature "is transformed into a realm in which we live as participants, not observers" (83). The result is a more ecocentric engagement with nature's beauty and sublimity. The second essay attempts to defend the sublime from some of its recent critics such as William Cronon and Anne Mellor (see below), who find the sublime complicit with masculinist technologies of domination. Hitt argues that the rupture between human and nature that occurs in the Kantian sublime may lead to a defamiliarization that triggers a heightened respect for nature and an clarification of our sense of place within nature. This emphasis upon defamiliarization, a key component of Romantic poetics, anticipates our discussion of Wordsworth's Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> and Coleridge's <i>Biographia Literaria</i>.</p>
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<p>Reading Schiller's <i>On the Na&#239;ve and Sentimental</i> helps to place Wordsworth's relationship to nature within Schiller's post-Kantian reworking of the dualist model. Schiller's distinction between the na&#239;ve poet who <i>is</i> nature, and the sentimental poet who <i>desires</i> nature, anticipates our later discussions of the dialectic between object and subject that on the one hand embraces natural objects and experience, and on the other may do so in the name of personal, subjective transcendence. Schiller's essay also reconceptualizes the primitivism we've seen in Diderot and Rousseau, establishing a post-Kantian framework from which to understand Wordsworth's affinity for rustic simplicity and childhood, as well as his nostalgia for a lost unity with nature&#8212;all themes that are broached in the Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>.</p>
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<p>Wordsworth, who may still be one of our best theorists&#8212;if not poets&#8212;of place, articulates a theory of dynamic reciprocity in the relationship between nature and mind, in the Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, to which we now turn. In the Preface Wordsworth tells us that the poet "considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions which by habit become of the nature of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding every where objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment" (605-606). Wordsworth here describes an embodied poetics of place wherein things and practices, convictions and intuitions, lead to habits or dispositions&#8212;a second nature&#8212;that shape the poet's understanding of and responses to his or her immediate environment. This philosophy of reciprocity and interdependence, of course, is not always fully realized in Wordsworth's poetry, where his interest often emphasizes the disjunction between mind and nature that enables a certain transcendence along the lines of Schiller's <i>Na&#239;ve and Sentimental.</i></p>
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<p>Wordsworth's Preface underscores the importance of defamiliarization as one of the more promising and recuperable Romantic strategies for today's ecopoetics and ecological practice. The poet, Wordsworth claims, effects an imaginative transformation of the ordinary events and situations in life so that "ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual way" (597). According to Coleridge's <i>Biographia Literaria</i>, Wordsworth's project intended "to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand" (<i>Biographia Literaria</i>, Chapter 14, 169). Thus, the poet aims to re-orient us, to recalibrate our apprehension of, the world&#8212;society and nature&#8212;in such a way that we can remake our relationship to it.</p>
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<p>To link ecocentrism to, and to foreground the importance of, Wordsworth and Coleridge's ideas on defamiliarization,&#160; we may refer to Neal Evernden's&#160; "Talking about the Mountain," chapter one of his <i>The Natural Alien</i>, which divides Romanticism into two streams&#8212;the shallow and the deep (29). Shallow Romanticism suggests false consciousness and nostalgia for a lost pastoral age, whereas deep Romanticism suggests what Ernst Bloch would call a positive utopian function&#8212;the desire to recognize in the present the necessity and means for transformative thinking and action.<a href="#4" name="ret4">[4]</a>&#160; According to Evernden, deep Romanticism&#8212;like the deep ecology of Arne Naess&#8212;challenges the prescriptive and mechanistic assumptions that underlie our conventional beliefs about our place in the life world. In this way, Coleridge's theory of the imagination may be seen as a way to dissolve the stale maps of the familiar in such a way that we construct new ways to bridge the distance between humanity and nature.</p>
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<p><b>Unit IV: Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</b> finds us at last in a position to turn our attention to the Romantic poetry and prose, beginning with a comparison of the figuration of nature's agency and the web of interdependence in Malthus and Wordsworth, both of whom have had a powerful influence upon our contemporary discussions of the vexed relationship between human beings and nature. From this point forward, each week continues to examine various elements of Romanticism, nature, and ecology by placing key Romantic texts into conversation with either philosophical or critical texts that highlight some aspect of the ideas we have introduced in the first part of the course: mechanism and dualism, holism, interdependence and interconnectedness, human and natural agency, aesthetic and ideological mediation, representation, defamiliarization, and what Greg Garrard has called the essential "puzzlement" that characterizes the Romantic ecopoetics.<a href="#5" name="ret5">[5]</a>&#160;I do not have space in this essay to describe each week's assignments in detail, so in what follows I will name the major texts in each week's discursive cluster and highlight some of the less obvious alignments of texts therein.</p>
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<p>Week seven focuses upon two revolutionary works, both published in 1798, that would profoundly influence the history of our thinking about the natural world: Wordsworth and Coleridge's <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> and Thomas Malthus's <i>Essay on Population</i>. While literary and environmental histories tend to bracket these two complementary but antagonistic works from one another, their ideas about nature's agency have become part of a discursive repertoire that informs our current debates about the environment and environmentalism. Beginning the section on Romantic literature with Malthus's apocalyptic view of nature's force not only displaces our usual definition of Romanticism, but enables us to conduct an illustrative contrast with the more benign sense of nature's power found in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's early poetry. From here we can trace the unraveling of two distinctive ways of thinking about nature's agency: as an overwhelming threat to those who take the earth for granted, and as a benevolent force and ground of human being and identity. For Malthus, nature's agency manifests itself as the iron law of population; for Wordsworth, as a beneficent spirit guiding humanity to its nobler ends. Karl Kroeber, one of the first to recognize Malthus's affiliation with Romanticism, accurately describes the common ground Malthus shares with Wordsworth and other romantic writers as a "sense for the interdependence of mind and body conceived in a developing relationship within a dynamic environment" (89).</p>
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<p>Catherine Gallagher's "The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew," which argues that Malthus's principle of population correlates the healthy individual body with food consumption within the context of impending scarcity, helps us to recognize the interdependence of natural and human forces&#8212;albeit from a perspective of apocalyptic alarm. As such, Malthus's essay points forward to the apocalypticism that Buell discusses in chapter nine of <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>, where he points out how master metaphors of interdependence such as "web," "chain of being," and "machine" both dramatize the networked relationships within the biosphere and to heighten the sense of catastrophe when the sense of reciprocity they entail is threatened with instability or with a sudden breach (as in the case of predictions of impending doom we find in Rachel Carson's <i>Silent Spring</i> or in the apocalyptic scenarios of the earth after global warming).</p>
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<p>In week nine (skipping a week here for a well deserved Fall or Spring break), Buell's "Pastoral Ideology," chapter one of <i>The</i> <i>Environmental Imagination</i>,&#160; and Geoffrey Hartman's "Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry" enter into conversation to place some of Wordsworth's shorter lyrics about nature, including "Expostulation and Reply," "To a Butterfly," and the Lucy poems into the context of the pastoral tradition. It is interesting to revisit Hartman's essay in the light of ecocriticism, for Hartman claims that the inscription was a subgenre that enables nature to speak directly from the poem, even as he shows how Wordsworth's transformation of the inscription leaves conventional topographical description behind by incorporating both setting&#8212;nature&#8212;and the act of writing into the poem. What results is a fusion of writerly identity and landscape: "The setting is understood to contain the writer in the act of writing: the poet in the grip of what he feels and sees, primitively inspired to carve it in the living rock" (222). Read alongside Hartman's essay, Buell's chapter, which tries to strike a balance between what we sometimes call the "red" and "green" politics of pastoral, invites us to question whether the incorporation of writerly process in landscape serves ecocentric, anthropocentric, or even egocentric ends. Does Wordsworth's version of pastoral foster ecological thinking and action, or does it simply offer a retreat from the world?&#160; To paraphrase Buell, does Wordsworth's poetry participate in a strategized eco-politics, or does it lead to mystification?&#160; Buell's essay leads us to discuss distinctions between English and American versions of pastoral. (One could also invoke here Jim McKusick's "Wordsworth's Home at Grasmere," chapter three of <i>Green Writing</i>. While McKusick claims that Wordsworth's is "a poetry of unmediated experience" [56] and shows that Wordsworth engages in a conversation
with nature, he acknowledges, like Buell, that the poetry of the home place may well be a projection of certain "fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the best way of life in a rural community" [62].)</p>
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<p>In week ten, we move from Wordsworth to Coleridge, beginning with a sequence of poems&#8212;Burns's "To a Mouse"; Coleridge's "To a Young Ass," and Clare's "The Mouses Nest"&#8212;that put to question the post-Cartesian dualism of human and animal. Kurt Fosso's <a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html">"'Sweet Influences': Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge"</a> engages precisely those questions and dovetails nicely with McKusick's "Coleridge and the Economy of Nature," chapter one of <i>Green Writing</i>, that places Coleridge's ecopoetics in the context of late eighteenth-century natural science. Both Fosso and McKusick point to the importance of Erasmus Darwin's work as a kind of prelude to the philosophy of One Life, which may be introduced here as a key aspect of Wordsworth and Coleridge's early ecological thinking. McKusick argues that Coleridge's very language, what he calls an "ecolect" (44), reorients us to see the natural world as a vital, integrated community where human beings become a part of, rather than apart from, the life world. McKusick's claims may foster a discussion about how far language enables us to converse with nature, to close the distance between us and other living things, and how far it serves, on the contrary, as a means to construct and to reify that distance.</p>
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<p>Weeks eleven through thirteen bring us to questions of place and return us to some of the questions about the gendering of spaces and nature that we broached in Unit II. Key texts in the cluster include Wordsworth's <i>Home at Grasmere</i>, <i>Michael</i>, and <i>The Prelude</i>; Charlotte Smith's <i>Beachy Head</i>; and Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden and Grasmere journals. Chapter eight of <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>, "Place," offers a helpful starting point and makes a clean transition to the previous discussions about defamiliarization. Lawrence Buell here reminds us that familiarity with a place does not necessarily "guarantee ecocentrism" (253). On the contrary, familiarity may actually foster a kind of unwise passiveness, if you will, wherein we take for granted and even&#160; ignore the particularities of our immediate social and natural surroundings. Buell in fact argues that one of the key functions of environmental writing is to deploy tropes of displacement and disorientation that force us to attend to the home place in a new way: "Seeing things new, seeing new things, expanding the notion of community so that it becomes situated within the ecological community&#8212;these are some of the ways in which environmental writing can reperceive the familiar in the interest of deepening the sense of place" (266). The question then becomes whether or not "Home at Grasmere," "Michael" and the early books of <i>The Prelude</i> offer examples of poems that&#8212;either for us, for the speaker, or for the author&#8212;enable or compel us to "reperceive" places.</p>
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<p>Buell's "New World Dreams and Environmental Actualities," chapter two of <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>, turns the question the other way around. How much do our projected desires interfere with the apprehension of place and how much do places become projections of our desires?&#160; Buell discusses environmental racism and shows how versions of pastoral have been constructed to suit the imperial desires of settler cultures. Nonetheless, he demonstrates that such tendencies, while latent in old world pastoral, may be transformed by writers such as Mary Austin who can take the myth of the new world and "use it in earth's interests as well as in humanity's" (55). With Austin's example in mind, we may ask whether Wordsworth's home places are places of actualities or templates upon which he projects his own desires for pastoral equanimity and natural simplicity. Either way, we may ask in whose interests Wordsworth's poetry deploys those representations of place.</p>
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<p>By placing Wordsworth's <i>Prelude</i> in tandem with Charlotte Smith's <i>Beachy Head</i>, we can compare the uses of the sublime in both poems. Geoffrey Hartman's "The Romance of Nature and the Negative Way" and Anne Mellor's "Domesticating the Sublime," chapter five of <i>Romanticism &amp; Gender</i>, promote a conversation about the gendering of the sublime in these two writers and point to the next week's discussion of Dorothy Wordsworth. Hartman's classic essay, of course, argues essentially that Wordsworth's poetry displays an attempt to overcome the tyranny of the visible. Nature, according to Hartman, offers Wordsworth a <i>via negativa</i> by means of which the human subject, at least in "exalted moments" such as the Snowden passage from the <i>Prelude</i>, reaches an ecstatic point of transcendence. Hartman's essay recalls the masculinist struggle of the Kantian sublime, as well as Schiller's reformulation of that dynamic in <i>On the Na&#239;ve and Sentimental</i>. Contrasting the masculine and feminine sublime, Mellor recasts the position Hartman's essay postulates by emphasizing that the sublime moment of encounter in the Burkean and Kantian formulations enacts a masculinist&#160; appropriation of the feminine: in the sublime encounter the male poet "speaks of, for and in the place of a nature originally gendered as female" (90). Mellor contrasts this form of sublime appropriation, as we might call it, with the feminine sublime of Radcliffe, Owensen and Ferrier which results not in "a moment of masculine empowerment over female nature" but in a sympathetic act of community with others (105). These readings underscore the importance of the aesthetic categories introduced earlier in the semester, and invite us to recall Garrard's effort to rethink an ecological sublime in which moments of rupture lead to a radical alienation followed by a recuperative act that reconnects the poet with the community of nature.</p>
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<p>From the sublime, we move in week thirteen to the more tempered demesnes of the beautiful and picturesque in Dorothy Wordsworth's <i>Journals</i>. Comparing Wordsworth's sense of place to Dorothy Wordsworth's has been a common exercise. Yet in the new context of anticipatory ecology the comparison reaps new insights. Here we may recall Buell's discussion in "Pastoral Ideology," chapter one of <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>, that the pastoral has been a means of empowering women, and that marginalization of nature writing at the periphery of the consecrated canons of British and American literature has been in part due to the close affinity between nature writing and women's writing&#8212;particularly in their shared interest in commonplace topics and in their minute attention to surface details. Anne K. Mellor's "Writing the Self/Self Writing," chapter seven of <i>Romanticism &amp; Gender</i>, offers a generative discussion of the distinctions between what she sees as Wordsworth's disembodied poetics of mind and Dorothy Wordsworth's embodied poetics of place. Mellor's analysis of Dorothy's "Floating Island at Hawkeshead" and the <i>Journals</i>, while not intended per se as an ecological reading, presents Dorothy's engagement with nature in a framework that invites comparison with Buell's discussion of Thoreau's "particularized immersion" at Walden (<i>Environmental Imagination</i> 132). So too does Anne Wallace's "<a href="http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/1/wallace.html">Inhabited Solitudes: Dorothy Wordsworth's Domesticating Walkers</a>," which argues that Dorothy's journals and her <i>Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland</i> essentially reconfigure the parameters of domestic space to encompass the landscapes demarcated by her walks: thus Dorothy redefines place, in the broader sense, as domestic space, which may be another way of saying that Dorothy's tourism, in contrast to that of, say, the picturesque traveler, engages in a practice of embodied
re-inhabiting. (If there is time, one might also assign Gary Snyder's "Reinhabitation" or "The Place, the Region, the Commons" to bring a bioregionalist perspective to the reinhabiting places.)&#160; Wallace's essay also is helpful for the classroom, for it offers students a concise synopsis of the conditions of textual labor and exchange in the Wordsworth household, defined as a set of relations extending beyond the cottage door, and she challenges us to redefine our understanding of domestic space.</p>
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<p>From immersion&#160; we move in week fourteen to rupture, placing Wordsworth's "Nutting" and Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" alongside Aldo Leopold's "Thinking Like a Mountain," a touchstone of environmental writing from his <i>Sand County Almanac</i>. In this influential essay written in the wake of the Kaibob Deer disaster of 1924, Leopold recounts an epiphanic episode in his life as he stares into the dying eyes of a wolf he and his companions have killed for sport. Leopold's exhortation that we must learn to think like a mountain&#8212;that is to think in terms of the symbiotic relationships between predator and prey, life and death&#8212;may be seen as a kind of ecocentric clarification of the more general, but related and anticipatory exhortations we find in Wordsworth's "Nutting" and Coleridge's "Rime." All three accounts involve an act of violence against nature&#8212;as hazel grove, as albatross, as wolf&#8212;that results in a scene of admonishment and instruction in one form or another. In his "In Quest of the Ordinary," Stanley Cavell reads the killing of the Albatross as the consequence of the Mariner's unconscious sense that nature has some claims upon him (193). Each of these acts may be read as a kind of <i>felix culpa</i>, wherein the human agent learns to recognize nature's agency in the very act of attempting to sever ties to it&#8212;in Serres's terms, in the act of breaching the natural contract of symbiotic reciprocity between humanity and nature. In each case, human agents move tragically beyond conventional knowledge toward an <i>anagnorisis</i> of their connection to the mystery and otherness of the natural world whose affiliation with the human they can no longer deny. Thinking back to the ecological sublime, we might see each of these incidents of rupture that expose our initial failure or inability to recognize our kinship with nature not as Kantian moments of transcendence or masculinist appropriation but as moments of
ambient engagement. Such moments may present the possibility of renewing our sense of dwelling as part of the life world. Of course, such a proposition may foster considerable disagreement among students, as well as among ourselves, and some may want to note particular nuances among the three episodes.</p>
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<p>Weeks fifteen and sixteen bring us to John Clare and to Martin Heidegger's concept of dwelling, which several of the critical texts throughout the semester have already anticipated. Jonathan Bate's "What are Poets For," chapter nine of <i>The Song of the Earth</i>, provides a comprehensive overview of Heidegger's importance to ecopoetics and asks us to consider the importance of poetry and poets in the transformation of consciousness that may lead us to a more balanced and responsible relationship to the earth. Putting Heidegger's "Building Dwelling Thinking" and, if there is time, "The Thing" together with Clare's poetry makes a poignant finish to Unit IV, recalling the ideas about nature's agency first introduced with Malthus and Wordsworth. Time permitting, one might round back on the last day of class to the last two chapters of <i>The Natural Contract</i> and ask whether or not Clare's presentation of nature's agency and interdependence recirculate as a part of the discursive repertoire that shapes our ecological vision today. In his final chapters, Serres refigures the symbiotic bond between humanity and nature as a kind of umbilical cord and points to the need for what he calls the "Instructed Third," a troubadour of knowledge, in his phrase, who elides the sciences and the humanities so that his or her knowledge and love of nature and humanity will enable a rethinking of our connectedness to nature and our "rootedness in the global" (95). It seems fitting to close the semester with Serres's meditations on "casting off," where he figures the natural contract as a cord that ties human beings together with earth in a reciprocal, symbiotic relationship that is mutually enabling and beneficial. In the final analysis, as an intensive, sixteen-week course on Romanticism, Nature, and Ecology nears a close, we are casting off. If the course has been successful we have displaced our conventional moorings by means of a critical re-reading of Romantic texts from the
multiple perspectives of contemporary environmental and ecocritical debate. In the final papers and projects, we may hope for further displacements, new trajectories for research, and effective, if exploratory, strategies for reading and writing ecocentrically.</p>
[<b><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/harrison/EcoRomanticSyll.html">SYLLABUS: Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</a></b>]</li>
</ol>
<h4 align="center">Notes</h4>
<p class="notes"><b><a name="1"> </a>[1]</b> See Jonathan Bate, <i>Romantic Ecology</i> and <i>The Song of the Earth</i>; Karl Kroeber, <i>Ecological Literary Criticism</i>;&#160; James C. McKusick, <i>Green Writing</i>; Onno<br/>
Oerlemans, <i>Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature</i>; and Kate Rigby, <i>Topographies of the Sacred</i>. Because both Bate and Kroeber seated their advocacy of ecocriticism in an attack upon New Historicist readings of Romantic literature, considerable controversy has surrounded its advent. Among the early critical responses to Bate and Kroeber, see Paul H. Fry's "Green to the very door?" Marlon Ross's "Reading Habits" and Greg Garrard's "Radical Pastoral?"&#160;&#160; I&#160; cannot discuss in this essay the plethora of ecocritical works dealing specifically with American literature, with the exception of Lawrence Buell's formative study <i>The Environmental Imagination</i>. [<a href="#ret1">BACK</a>]</p>
<div id="edn2">
<p class="notes"><a name="2"> </a><b>[2]</b> See Jonathan Bate, ed. "Green Writing," <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 35. 3 (Fall 1996): 355-467; James C. McKusick, ed. "Romanticism and Ecology" <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i> 28 (Summer 1997): 121-200; and James C. McKusick, ed. <a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/">"Romanticism &amp; Ecology,"</a> <i>Romantic Circles Praxis Series</i> (November 2001). [<a href="#ret2">BACK</a>]</p>
</div>
<p class="notes"><a name="3"> </a><b>[3]</b> See also Hayden White's "The Noble Savage Theme as Fetish," where he notes that the Noble Savage is not just "the projection of a dream of Edenic innocence onto the fragmentary knowledge of the New World," but also a nightmare that contains "references to violations of taboos regarded as inviolable by Europeans. . . . " (<i>Tropics of Discourse</i> 187). [<a href="#ret3">BACK</a>]</p>
<p class="notes"><a name="4" id="4"> </a><b>[4]</b> For Bloch in <i>The Principle of Hope</i>, the anticipatory potential of utopian thinking may serve a positive function when utopian desire embraces concrete historical possibilities, when "human culture [is] referred to its concrete utopian horizon" (1: 146.) [<a href="#ret4">BACK</a>]</p>
<p class="notes"><a name="5"><b>[5]</b></a> In "Radical Pastoral," Greg Garrard questions what he describes as the "eco-philosophical sleight-of-hand" that allows eco-critics such as Bate and Kroeber to gloss over Romanticism's own, sometimes self-conscious, "puzzlement" about the relationship between humanity and nature, evidenced in the very poets put forward to demonstrate the seamless affiliation between the two (463-64). [<a href="#ret5">BACK</a>]</p>
<hr size="1" noshade="noshade"/>
<h4 align="center">Works Cited</h4>
<p class="wc">Bate, Jonathan. <i>Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="wc">---. <i>The Song of the Earth</i>. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000.</p>
<p class="wc">Berleant, Arnold. "The Aesthetics of Art and Nature." <i>The Aesthetics of Natural</i> <i>Environments</i>. Ed. Allen Carlson and Arnold Berleant. Peterborough, Canada: Broadview, 2004.</p>
<p class="wc">Bloch, Ernst. <i>The Principle of Hope</i>. Trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight.&#160;3 vols.&#160;London: Basil Blackwell; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.</p>
<p class="wc">Bordo, Susan. "The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought." <i>Signs</i> 11 (Spring 1986): 439-456.</p>
<p class="wc">Buell, Lawrence. <i>The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the</i> <i>Formation of American Culture</i>.&#160;Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 1995.</p>
<p class="wc">Cavell, Stanley. "In Quest of the Ordinary: Texts of Recovery."&#160;<i>Romanticism and</i> <i>Contemporary Criticism.</i>&#160;Ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer.&#160;Ithaca and London: Cornell U P, 1986. 183-239.</p>
<p class="wc">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.&#160;<i>Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of My</i> <i>Literary&#160; Life and Opinions</i>.&#160;Ed. George Watson.&#160;London: J. M. Dent &amp; New York: E. P Dutton, 1975.</p>
<p class="wc">Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature."&#160;<i>Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature</i>.&#160;Ed. William Cronon.&#160;New York &amp; London: W. W. Norton, 1995.&#160;69-90.</p>
<p class="wc">Evernden, Neil. <i>The Natural Alien: Humankind and Environment</i>. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1983.</p>
<p class="wc">Ferry, Luc. <i>The New Ecological Order</i>. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995.</p>
<p class="wc">Fry, Paul.&#160;"Green to the very door? The natural Wordsworth."&#160;<i>Studies in Romanticism</i>. 35.4 (Winter 1996): 535-51.</p>
<p class="wc">Fosso, Kurt.&#160;"Sweet Influences": Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806." <i>Romantic Circles Praxis Series</i> Romanticism and Ecology.&#160;November 2001.&#160;2 April 2005. &lt;http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html&gt;</p>
<p class="wc">Gallagher, Catherine.&#160;"The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew."&#160;<i>The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and</i> <i>Society in the Nineteenth Century</i>.&#160;Ed. Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur.&#160;Berkeley: U of California P, 1987.&#160;83-106.</p>
<p class="wc">Garrard, Greg. "Radical Pastoral?&#160; <i>Studies in Romanticism</i>. 35.3 (Fall 1996): 449-65.</p>
<p class="wc">Hartman, Geoffrey. "The Romance of Nature and the Negative Way." <i>Romanticism and</i> <i>Consciousness: Essays in Criticism.</i> Ed. Harold Bloom.&#160;New York: W. W. Norton, 1970.&#160;287-305.</p>
<p class="wc">---.&#160;"Wordsworth, Inscriptions, and Romantic Nature Poetry."&#160;<i>Beyond Formalism:</i> <i>Literary Essays 1958-70</i>.&#160;New Haven: Yale U P, 1970.&#160;206-30.</p>
<p class="wc">Heidegger, Martin.&#160;"Building Dwelling Thinking."&#160;<i>Poetry, Language, Thought</i>.&#160;Trans. Albert Hofstadter.&#160;1971; rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. 145-61.</p>
<p class="wc">---. "The Thing."&#160;<i>Poetry, Language, Thought</i>. Trans. Albert Hofstadter.&#160;1971; rpt. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. 165-82.</p>
<p class="wc">Hitt, Christopher."Toward an Ecological Sublime." <i>New Literary History</i> 30.3 (1999): 603-23.</p>
<p class="wc">Kroeber, Karl. <i>Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of</i> <i>Mind</i>.&#160;New York: Columbia UP, 1994.</p>
<p class="wc">Leopold, Aldo.&#160;"Thinking Like a Mountain."&#160;<i>A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on</i> <i>Conservation from Round River</i>. 1949; rpt. New York: Ballantine, 1976. 137-41.</p>
<p class="wc">McKusick, James C. "Introduction: Romanticism and Ecology."&#160;<i>The Wordsworth</i> <i>Circle</i> (Summer 1997): 123-24.</p>
<p class="wc">---.&#160;<i>Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology</i>. New York: St. Martin's, 2000.</p>
<p class="wc">Mellor, Anne.&#160;<i>Romanticism &amp; Gender</i>. New York and London: Routledge, 1993.</p>
<p class="wc">Merchant, Carolyn.&#160;<i>The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution</i>. 1980; rpt. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1990.</p>
<p class="wc">Oelschlager, Max. <i>The Idea of Wilderness: From Pre-history to the Age of Ecology.</i> New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1991.</p>
<p class="wc">Oerlemans, Onno. <i>Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature</i>. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002.</p>
<p class="wc">Percy, Walker. "The Loss of Creature." <i>The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is,</i> <i>How Queer Language&#160;Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other</i>&#160;New York: Farrar, Strauss &amp; Giroux, 1975. 46-63.</p>
<p class="wc">Phelan, Shane. "Intimate Distance: The Dislocation of Nature in Modernity."&#160;<i>In the</i> <i>Nature of Things: Language, Politics, and the Environment</i>.&#160;Ed. Jane Bennett and William Chaloupka.&#160;Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1993. 44-62.</p>
<p class="wc">Pite, Ralph. "How Green were the Romantics?"&#160;<i>Studies in Romanticism.</i> 35.3 (Fall 1996): 357-373.</p>
<p class="wc">Plumwood, Val.&#160;<i>Environmental Culture: The ecological crisis of reason</i>.&#160;New York: Routledge, 2002.</p>
<p class="wc">Rigby, Kate. <i>Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European</i> <i>Romanticism</i>. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2004.</p>
<p class="wc">Ross, Marlon.&#160;"Reading Habits<span style="color:black">: Scenes of Romantic Miseducation and the Challenge of Eco-Literacy."&#160;<i>The Lessons of Romanticism: A Critical Companion</i>.&#160;Ed. Robert F. Gleckner and Thomas Pfau. Durham and London: Duke UP, 1998. 126-156.</span></p>
<p class="wc">Serres, Michel.&#160;<i>The Natural Contract</i>.&#160;Trans. Elizabeth MacArthur &amp; William Paulson.&#160;Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.</p>
<p class="wc">Simmons, I.G.&#160;<i>Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="wc">Snyder, Gary.&#160;"The Place, the Region, the Commons."&#160;<i>The Practice of the Wild</i>. New York: North Point Press, 1990. 25-47.</p>
<p class="wc">---. "Reinhabitation."&#160;<i>A Place</i> <i>in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Watersheds</i>.&#160;Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1995. 183-91.</p>
<p class="wc">Wallace, Anne. "Inhabited Solitudes: Dorothy Wordsworth's Domesticating Walkers.&#160;<i>Nordlit</i> 1. 4 April 2005. &lt;<a href="http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/1/wallace.html">http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/1/wallace.html</a>&gt;</p>
<p class="wc">White, Hayden. "The Forms of Wildness: Archaeology of an Idea."&#160;<i>Tropics of&#160;</i><i>Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism.</i> Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. 150-82.</p>
<p class="wc">---. "The Noble Savage Theme as Fetish." <i>Tropics of&#160; Discourse: Essays in Cultural</i> <i>Criticism.</i>&#160;Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.&#160;183-96.</p>
<p class="wc">Wordsworth, William.&#160;Preface to <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>.&#160;<i>William Wordsworth</i>. Stephen Gill, ed.&#160;1984; rpt. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. 595-615.</p>
<p class="wc">Worster, Donald.&#160;<i>Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas</i>.&#160;2nd ed.&#160;Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994.</p>
</div></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/commons/ecology/index.html">Romanticism, Ecology and Pedagogy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/harrison-gary">Harrison, Gary</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/kant-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kant</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/james-mckusick" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">James McKusick</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/668" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocriticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/immanuel-kant" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Immanuel Kant</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-gilpin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Gilpin</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/997" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">picturesque</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/martin-heidegger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Martin Heidegger</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1243" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environment</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/samuel-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/rene-descartes" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Rene Descartes</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1639" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nature</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/friedrich-schiller" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Friedrich Schiller</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/malthus" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Malthus</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/michel-serres" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michel Serres</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/lawrence-buell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lawrence Buell</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/kate-rigby" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kate Rigby</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/aldo-leopold" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Aldo Leopold</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/francis-bacon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Francis Bacon</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/denis-diderot" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Denis Diderot</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jean-jacques-rousseau-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jean Jacques Rousseau</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3424" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">simplicity</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3425" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">primitivism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3426" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">place</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3427" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocentrism</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3428" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">symbiosis</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/thomas-malthus" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Thomas Malthus</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/louis-antoine-de-bougainville" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Louis Antoine de Bougainville</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-cronon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Cronon</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/onno-oerlemans" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Onno Oerlemans</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/carolyn-merchant" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Carolyn Merchant</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/susan-cooper" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Susan Cooper</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/gary-harrison-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gary Harrison</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/charlotte-smith-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Smith</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/christopher-hitt" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Christopher Hitt</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/karl-kroeber" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Karl Kroeber</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/lawrence-buell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lawrence Buell</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/aldo-leopold" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Aldo Leopold</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-gilpin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Gilpin</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/walker-percy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Walker Percy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/kate-rigby" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kate Rigby</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/arnold-berleant" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Arnold Berleant</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/max-oelschlager" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Max Oelschlager</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/paul-fry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paul Fry</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jim-mckusick" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jim McKusick</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/francis-bacon" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Francis Bacon</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/ralph-waldo-emerson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/michel-serres" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michel Serres</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/ann-radcliffe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ann Radcliffe</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/luc-ferry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Luc Ferry</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/geoffrey-hartman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Geoffrey Hartman</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/neal-evernden" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Neal Evernden</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/ralph-pite" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ralph Pite</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/denis-diderot" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Denis Diderot</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jean-jacques-rousseau" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/mary-austin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mary Austin</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jonathan-bate-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jonathan Bate</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/donald-worster" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Donald Worster</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/i-g-simmons" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">I. G. Simmons</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/new-mexico" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New Mexico</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-region-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Region:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/region/new-england" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">new England</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-naturalfeature-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NaturalFeature:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/natural-feature/mt-ktaadn" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Mt. Ktaadn</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:37:02 +0000rc-admin22053 at http://www.rc.umd.eduRomanticism, Nature, Ecology Syllabushttp://www.rc.umd.edu/pedagogies/commons/ecology/harrison/EcoRomanticSyll.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2006-12-01T00:00:00-05:00">December 2006</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><h3 align="center">Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</h3>
<p><span class="epigcit">Dr. Gary Harrison</span><br/>
<span class="epigcit">Department of English</span><br/>
<span class="epigcit">University of New Mexico</span></p>
<p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;This colloquium will study the relationship between Romantic literature and the environment. Drawing upon a few key theoretical and literary works from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as well as from key texts in contemporary ecological literary criticism, environmental literature, and philosophy, we will ask what constitutes environmental literature, how such literature shapes environmental consciousness and action, and how Romantic perspectives question the human place in the world, the relationship between human perception and the natural world, and our co-existence as human beings in the larger living organism of the earth.&#160; Rather than turn to Romanticism as a guide to current environmental practices, our interest will be in Romanticism as a cultural discourse that opens up conceptual, critical and poetic investigations about our&#160; relationship to the environment and as a site for the emergence of ecopoetics.&#160;&#160; As we move through our readings, we will also attend to the way Romantic discourse has helped to shape the discursive repertoire of environmental practices and perceptions today.&#160; Readings will include poetry by William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charlotte Smith, and John Clare; non-fiction prose by Jean Jacques Rousseau and Dorothy Wordsworth; and philosophical, historical, and critical essays by Friedrich Schiller, Martin Heidegger, Aldo Leopold, Michel Serres, Donald Worster, and others. &#160;Lawrence Buell&#8217;s <em>The Environmental Imagination</em> will serve as a primary source for questions and concepts about environmental literature and ecocentrism that we will apply to our readings in British Romanticism; that book&#8217;s focus primarily upon American literature will create a cultural dissonance that should unsettle our perspective on British Romantic literature, providing a unique critical purchase on the history of
British environmental literature, while keeping us in sight of the concurrent history of American environmental literature.</p>
<p><strong>Requirements</strong> will include writing several short exploratory essays; presenting a summary of, and leading discussion on, at least two of the critical works assigned for each day; and writing an article-length final paper, a synopsis of which you will present on the last day of class.&#160;&#160; Topics for your papers and presentations may include literary, scientific or philosophical works; contemporary literary criticism and theory;&#160; key texts in the history of ecological thought, ecocriticism, environmental ethics, or environmental perception; and the writers we will be discussing.&#160; You should confirm your final paper topic with me on or before the end of week twelve.&#160;</p>
<p><strong>Required Texts</strong>:<br/>
Buell, Lawrence. <em>The Environmental Imagination</em>. The Belknap Press,&#160; 1995.<br/>
Burke, Edmund. <em>A Philosophical Enquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful</em>. Ed. Adam Phillips.&#160; Oxford U P, 1998.<br/>
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <em>Selected Poems</em>. Ed. H. J. Jackson. Oxford U P, 1985.<br/>
Descartes, Ren&#233;.&#160; <em>Discourse on Method and Meditations</em>. Trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross. Dover, 2003.<br/>
Robinson, Eric and David Powell, eds. <em>John Clare</em>. Oxford Authors. Oxford U P, 1984.<br/>
Rousseau, Jean Jacques.&#160; <em>The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality</em>. Trans. Maurice Cranston. Penguin, 1985.<br/>
<em>-----.&#160; Reveries of the Solitary Walker</em>.&#160; Trans. Peter France.&#160; Penguin Classics, 1979.<br/>
Serres, Michel. <em>The Natural Contract</em>.&#160; Trans. Elizabeth MacArthur &amp; William Paulson.&#160; Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1995.<br/>
Wordsworth, Dorothy.&#160; <em>Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.</em> Ed. Mary Moorman.&#160; 1958; rpt. Oxford: Oxford U P, 1971.<br/>
Wordsworth, William.&#160; <em>Selected Poems</em>.&#160; Ed. John O. Hayden.&#160; New York: Penguin, 1994.<br/>
<strong>Recommended Texts</strong>:<br/>
Bate, Jonathan.&#160; <em>The Song of the Earth</em>. Harvard U P, 2000.<br/>
McKusick, James C. <em>Green Writing</em>. St. Martins Press, 2000.<br/></p>
<p><strong>Schedule:</strong></p>
<p><strong>Unit I: Introduction and Outline of Problem</strong><br/>
Week 1<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Introduction; Michel Serres, &#8220;War, Peace,&#8221; (Chapter 1, <em>Natural Contract</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Serres, &#8220;Natural Contract&#8221; (Chapter 2, <em>Natural Contract</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Jonathan Bate, &#8220;Going, Going&#8221; (Chapter 1, <em>Song of the Earth</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Lawrence Buell, &#8220;Introduction&#8221; to <em>Environmental Imagination</em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">James McKusick, Introduction to <em>Green Writing</em></span></p>
<p><strong>Unit II:&#160; Nature and Culture</strong><br/>
Week 2<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Bacon, <em><a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=BacAtla.sgm&amp;images=images/modeng&amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&amp;tag=public&amp;part=1&amp;division=div1">The New Atlantis</a></em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Descartes, <em><a href="http://www.literature.org/authors/descartes-rene/reason-discourse/">Discourse on Method</a></em>; from <em><a href="http://www.wright.edu/cola/descartes">Meditations</a></em>&#160; I &amp; II</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Carolyn Merchant, &#8220;Dominion Over Nature,&#8221; (Chapter 7, <em>Death of Nature</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Donald Worster, &#8220;The Empire of Reason&#8221; (Chapter 2, <em>Nature&#8217;s Economy</em>)</span><br/>
Week 3<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Diderot, <a href="http://courses.essex.ac.uk/cs/cs101/Boug.htm">Supplement to <em>Bougainville&#8217;s Travels</em></a></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Rousseau, <a href="http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&amp;d=28540967">&#8220;Discourse on the Origin of Inequality&#8221;</a></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Jonathan Bate, &#8220;The State of Nature&#8221; (Chapter 2, <em>Song of the Earth</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Hayden White, &#8220;The Forms of Wildness&#8221;</span></p>
<p><strong>Unit III: Romantic Aesthetics and Nature</strong><br/>
Week 4 The Beautiful and Picturesque<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Burke, <em><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/">A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful</a></em>, Parts I and III; Kant, from <em>Critique of Judgment</em>, Part One, First Book, 1 &#8211; 13, 17</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Gilpin, from <em>Three Essays on the Picturesque</em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Jonathan Bate, &#8220;The Picturesque Environment&#8221; (Chapter 5, <em>Song of the Earth</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Walker Percy, &#8220;The Loss of the Creature&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 5 The Sublime<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Burke, <em><a href="http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/">A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful</a></em>, Part II</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Kant, from <em>Critique of Judgment</em>, Part One, Second Book, 23 &#8211; 29</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Arnold Berleant, &#8220;The Aesthetics of Art and Nature&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Christopher Hitt, &#8220;Toward an Ecological Sublime&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 6<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Schiller, <em>On the Na&#239;ve and Sentimental</em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Wordsworth, Preface to <em>Lyrical Ballads</em>; Coleridge, from Chapters 4, 13, 14 of <em>Biographia Literaria</em>; from <em>Lectures on Shakespeare</em> &#8220;Mechanic and Organic&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Lawrence Buell, &#8220;Representing the Environment&#8221; (Chapter 3, <em>Environmental Imagination</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Neal Evernden, &#8220;Talking about the Mountain&#8221; (Chapter 1, <em>Natural Alien</em>)</span></p>
<p><strong>Unit IV: Romanticism, Nature, Ecology</strong><br/>
Week 7<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Malthus, from <em><a href="http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MalPopu.html">Essay on Population</a></em> (Chapters 1 and 2)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Wordsworth, &#8220;Lines Written a&#160; Few Miles above Tintern Abbey&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Catherine Gallagher, "The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Malthus and Henry Mayhew." <em>Representations</em> 14 (Spring 1986): 83-106.</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Buell, &#8220;Environmental Apocalypticism&#8221; (Chapter 9, <em>Environmental Imagination</em>)</span><br/>
Week 8 <strong>Break</strong><br/>
Week 9<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T:&#160; Wordsworth, &#8220;Expostulation and Reply,&#8221; &#8220;The Tables Turned,&#8221; &#8220;Lines, Written at a Small Distance from My House,&#8221; &#8220;Lines Written in Early Spring,&#8221; &#8220;The world is too much with us,&#8221; &#8220;I wandered lonely as a cloud,&#8221;&#160; &#8220;To a Butterfly&#8221;; &#8220;It is a beauteous Evening, calm and free,&#8221; &#8220;To the Cuckoo&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Wordsworth, &#8220;Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree,&#8221; &#8220;A slumber did my spirit seal,&#8221; &#8220;She dwelt among untrodden ways,&#8221;&#160; &#8220;Strange fits of passion I have known,&#8221; &#8220;Lucy Gray&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Buell, &#8220;Pastoral Ideology&#8221; (Chapter 1, <em>Environmental Imagination</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Hartman, &#8220;Wordsworth, Inscriptions and Romantic Nature Poetry&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 10<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Burns, <a href="http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem337.html">&#8220;To a Mouse&#8221;</a>; Coleridge, &#8220;Sonnet: To the River Otter,&#8221; &#8220;To a Young Ass,&#8221; &#8220;The Eolian Harp,&#8221; &#8220;Frost at Midnight,&#8221; &#8220;This Lime Tree Bower My Prison&#8221;; Clare, &#8220;The Mouses Nest&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Coleridge,&#8220;The Nightingale,&#8221; &#8220;Dejection: An Ode&#8221;; Wordsworth, &#8220;Ode: Intimations of Immortality&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Kurt Fosso, <a href="http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html">"Sweet Influences": Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806.&#8221;</a></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">McKusick, &#8220;Coleridge and the Economy of Nature&#8217; (Chapter 1, <em>Green Writing</em>)</span><br/>
Week 11<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Wordsworth, &#8220;Home at Grasmere,&#8221;&#160; &#8220;Michael&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Wordsworth, <em>The Prelude</em>, Books 1-2, 4, 6</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Buell, &#8220;Place&#8221; (Chapter 8, <em>Environmental Imagination</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Buell, &#8220;New World Dreams and Environmental Actualities&#8221; (Chapter 2, <em>Environmental Imagination</em>)</span><br/>
Week 12<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Wordsworth, <em>Prelude</em>, Books 7, 8, 14</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Charlotte Smith, <em><a href="http://digital.lib.ucdavis.edu/projects/bwrp/Works/SmitCBeach.htm">Beachy Head</a></em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Geoffrey Hartman, &#8220;The Romance of Nature and the Negative Way&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Anne Mellor, &#8220;Domesticating the Sublime&#8221; (Chapter 5, <em>Romanticism and Gender</em>)</span><br/>
Week 13<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T:&#160; Dorothy Wordsworth, &#8220;Floating Island at Hawkeshead&#8221;; <em>Journals</em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R:&#160; Wordsworth, <em>Journals</em></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Anne Mellor, &#8220;Writing the Self/Self Writing&#8221; (Chapter 7, <em>Romanticism and Gender</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Anne Wallace, <a href="http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/1/wallace.html">&#8220;Inhabited Solitudes: Dorothy Wordsworth&#8217;s Domesticating</a></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><a href="http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/1/wallace.html">Walkers&#8221;</a></span><br/>
Week 14<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Wordsworth, &#8220;Nutting&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Coleridge, &#8220;The Rime of the Ancient Mariner&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Aldo Leopold, &#8220;Thinking Like a Mountain&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Stanley Cavell, &#8220;In Quest of the Ordinary&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 15<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: John Clare, &#8220;The Peasant Poet,&#8221; &#8220;Helpstone,&#8221; &#8220;Helpston Green,&#8221; Partridge Coveys,&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">The Land Rail&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Clare, &#8220;To a Fallen Elm,&#8221;&#160; &#8220;The Mores,&#8221; &#8220;Emmonsales Heath&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Jonathan Bate, &#8220;What are Poets For&#8221; (Chapter 9, <em>Song of the Earth</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Heidegger, &#8220;Building Dwelling Thinking&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 16<br/>
<span class="syllindent">T: Clare, &#8220;The Lamentations of Round Oak Waters,&#8221; &#8220;The Lament of Swordy Well&#8221;</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">R: Serres, &#8220;Science, Law&#8221; &amp; &#8220;Casting Off&#8221; (Chapters 3 and 4, <em>Natural Contract</em>)</span><br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Critical Works:</strong></span><br/>
<span class="syllindent">Heidegger, &#8220;The Thing&#8221;</span><br/>
Week 17<br/>
<span class="syllindent"><strong>Final Examination Week</strong></span></p></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31530">Pedagogies</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Resource:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/pedagogies/syllabi/index.html">Online Syllabi</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/harrison-gary">Harrison, Gary</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1639" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">nature</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3601" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabi</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/3600" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">syllabus</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/michel-serres" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michel Serres</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/gary-harrison-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Gary Harrison</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/charlotte-smith-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Charlotte Smith</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/friedrich-schiller" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Friedrich Schiller</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-clare" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Clare</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/lawrence-buell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lawrence Buell</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/aldo-leopold" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Aldo Leopold</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/martin-heidegger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Martin Heidegger</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/walker-percy" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Walker Percy</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/adam-phillips" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Adam Phillips</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jean-jacques-rousseau" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jean-Jacques Rousseau</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jonathan-bate-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jonathan Bate</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/donald-worster" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Donald Worster</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/ann-arbor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ann Arbor</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/oxford" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Oxford</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/new-mexico" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New Mexico</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/michigan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michigan</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-syllabi-categories field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Syllabi Categories:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/syllabi-categories/ecology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Ecology</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 22 Nov 2011 03:36:40 +0000rc-admin22052 at http://www.rc.umd.edu"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworthhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/ecology/index.html">Romanticism and Ecology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h2 style="text-align: center">Romanticism &amp; Ecology</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">"Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center">Timothy Morton, University of Colorado at Boulder</h4>
<p class="epigraph">The spacious ambience of nature when treated with respect, allows physical and emotional freedom; it is an outdoor room essential to thought and untraumatic (that is, relatively unforced) development.<br/>
&#8212;Geoffrey Hartman, <i>The Fateful Question of Culture</i>, p. 158</p>
<blockquote>
<p style="font-weight: bold">"The Star"</p>
<p>Twinkle, twinkle, little star,<br/>
How I wonder what you are!<br/>
Up above the world so high,<br/>
Like a diamond in the sky.<br/><br/>
When the blazing sun is gone,<br/>
When he nothing shines upon,<br/>
Then you show your little light,<br/>
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.<br/><br/>
Then the traveller in the dark,<br/>
Thanks you for your tiny spark:<br/>
He could not see which way to go,<br/>
If you did not twinkle so.<br/><br/>
In the dark blue sky you keep,<br/>
And often through my curtains peep,<br/>
For you never shut your eye,<br/>
Till the sun is in the sky.<br/><br/>
As your bright and tiny spark<br/>
Lights the traveller in the dark,<br/>
Though I know not what you are,<br/>
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.<br/><br/>
- Jane Taylor</p>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li style="list-style: none; display: inline">
<div style="text-align: center">
<h4>Introduction</h4>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>In his article on the ways in which orientalist visual art disrupts the difference between figure and ground, Nigel Leask employs William Galperin's work on panoramas to show how Romantic orientalist scenes were based upon an "absorptive" aesthetic (Leask 166-7, 169-75).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#1">1</a></sup> I contend that this absorptive aesthetic resides not only in the visual, but also in the other perceptual dimensions; and that it is caught up in, but also goes beyond, orientalism, as recently demonstrated in <i>The Poetics of Spice</i> (Morton, <i>Spice</i> chapter 5). In fact, as I show here, it complicates relationships between orientalist landscape and domestic pastoral, and moreover between the local and the global. I call it ambience, and it turns out that this aesthetic provides a novel way of reading literature with a mind for ecology. This essay contributes to a fresh approach, a playful attempt to open discussion concerning the nature of "green" Romantic poetry. It is incomplete, but it is offered in the hope that it might point out further avenues of study. It forms part of my forthcoming book project, tentatively entitled <i>Ambience: Aesthetics, Private Property and Public Space; a Study in Ecocriticism</i>. To a large extent, the essay continues the line of thought explored in David Simpson's <i>Wordsworth and the Figurings of the Real</i>, especially the final section, "Societies of Figures."</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>It is lamentably little-known that one of the world's most famous nursery rhymes is a Romantic poem; not only that, but as I will argue in this essay, a special kind of Romantic-ecological poem that I have chosen to call <i>ambient</i>. Furthermore, it is a strong example of a feminine Romantic lineage; though this is a poem by a woman, I hesitate to say that it is "female," especially insofar as one might note similar poetic phenomena in Keats and Shelley, and for that matter Coleridge and Wordsworth. A close analysis of this poem will help to reconceive Romantic ecological poetry, which so far has been notoriously both masculine and male.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>As is common in ambient poetry, the poem deconstructs the metaphysical opposition between writing and nature commonly found in Romantic-ecological discourse. It negotiates between the global and the local, terms often placed in too rigid an opposition to one another in Romanticist discourse. By offering a form of "portable localism," a strategic essentialism, the poem traverses the general and the particular. Moreover, its matter is not the physical conquest of an objectified earth, but the sonic and graphic location of the subject in a world. It is about as unmilitaristic as one could imagine, short of evaporating the subject in a haze of nihilism. The poem is a nursery rhyme called "The Star" by Jane Taylor (1783-1824).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>I demonstrate that a soft, "feminine" form of ecological awareness is legible even in the poet often established as the lynchpin of masculine Romanticism, William Wordsworth (Fay 80-92, 180-9, 214-26; Ross; Mellor; Morton chapter 5).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#2">2</a></sup> If this is valid, then ambience is truly a dialectical image, in the sense meant by Walter Benjamin: an image that is capable of being read both "with" and "against" the "grain" of dominant ideologies. The dialectical image of ambience will help us to redefine the Romantic period's representation of nature, and it is in this light that I read the Ancient Mariner's encounter with the water snakes.</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<h4>Why ambient poetry?</h4>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>One may pose differently the question of the distinction between person and environment: what if people were more like environments? If James Lovelock noted that the weather worked like a person (Lovelock 1-12), why not imagine a person as being like the weather? In other words, perhaps one might deconstruct personhood into ambience, atmosphere, surroundings, dwelling, environment. . . This would provide a more appropriate philosophical view (I am reluctant to say "ontological foundation") for a deep ecology, an ecology that could assume that a politics of the environment must be coterminous with a change in the view of those who exist in/as that environment. A poetry that articulated the person as environment would not invert anthropocentrism into "ecocentrism," it would thoroughly undo the notion of a center.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Is there any poetic evidence for the possibility of this deconstruction of the opposition of personhood and environment in the Romantic period? Jerome McGann's <i>The Poetics of Sensibility</i>, while risking essentialism and a kind of inverted sexism, suggests that there were indeed kinds of poetry in the Romantic period that ignored, for the most part, the masculine drama of subjectivity and objectivity in which traditional Romantic aesthetics has been caught, especially in its transcendental idealist articulations. Women Romantic poets were noted for a more embodied poetics than this, declares McGann (136-49), a poetics that infused the mind and body in a somewhat counter-dualistic fashion. One of the problems of Romantic ecology has been its almost complete lack of attention to women Romantic poets. This lack of attention is a symptom of the ideological frame in which Romantic ecology is caught: an outdoorsy masculinity that resists both intellectuality and femininity.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"The Star" is both indoors and outdoors, taking apart the difference between feminized interior domestic space and masculinized exterior work space; the comforting implication is that what is outside is also inside&#8212;the star peeps through the curtain; the discomforting implication is that what is inside is really just a special instance of the outside&#8212;that subjectivity itself is a lonely traveler wandering under the stars. "The Star" succeeds in being both intimate and alien, and thus it is not so much rigidly anti-anthropocentric as it is deconstructively deep-ecological. It enacts a non-essentialist awareness of the interdependence of subject and object, perceiver and perceived: an environmental awareness.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Deep ecology proposes that if ecological politics is to succeed, a truly ecological subjectivity needs to be established. It is in this spirit that I offer the notion of ambience for consideration. In teaching classes on literature and ecology, I have noticed that ecological sentiment often entails a lot of guilt, which reinforces subject-object dualism, which is toxic to the environment; and so forth. Guilt, as Slavoj Zizek has observed, reproduces the illusion of a metalinguistic vantage point outside one's world: the confident vulgar poststructuralist clich&#233; that "there is no metalanguage" is asserted from just such a position; and so is the guilt that is only a sniff away from the White Man's Burden (Zizek, <i>Sublime Object</i> 154-5; <i>Tarrying</i> 213-4). I have therefore temporarily given up teaching classes directly about ecology. Instead I have been working with students to explore awareness of space, or better, spaciousness. For in order to have an environment, one must have a space to have it in. And in order to have environmental awareness, one must be aware of space as more than just a vacuum. One must start taking note of, taking care of, one's world.</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<h4>Domesticity, women's poetry, and public space</h4>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>Let us consider more closely the notions of space with which the poem works. Jane Taylor's lyrics were published in <i>Rhymes for the Nursery</i> (1806). Alan Richardson has observed that books for children, including nursery rhymes, were luxury objects produced during the birth of a consumer society in eighteenth-century Britain, as charted by McKendrick, Brewer and Plumb (Richardson 154, 165). Though its content is primarily primitivist in its calculated naivet&#233;, "The Star"'s form as a commodity is one of sophisticated luxury, training the child to enjoy consumerism. This notion of luxury is encoded in the poem's diction, however, by the "diamond" simile (4), the kind of figure which Mary Louise Pratt has associated with imperial representation (Pratt 204). The hesitation between luxury and primitivism, between artifice and nature, is a productive (and deconstructive) feature both of this poem and, surprisingly, of Wordsworthian Romanticism, even though that discourse ostensibly runs against the eighteenth-century discourse of luxury (see the argument below on Wordsworth and the <i>Arabian Nights</i>).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Carol Shiner Wilson argues that while Taylor's poetry celebrates the domestic art of needlework in the service of the patriarchy (though not unambiguously), her "correspondence reveals a profound ambivalence towards domesticity" (Wilson 179). Writing and sewing or weaving have been interrelated at least since Sappho. In Taylor's work, these processes are implicated together in complex ways.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#3">3</a></sup> Writing may surpass weaving as a labor of value, or vice versa (179-80). Joel Haefner has shown how poetry evoking Sappho in the Romantic period is situated either in the drawing room or in "A domesticated natural world" (Haefner 270). The superposition of these is what Haefner calls "an intimate public space" (272); one might go so far as to say that the nursery (the putative location of "The Star"), was such a space as this, traversed by children, governesses and parents.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Taylor admired the public nature of Corrine and Mme de Sta&#235;l (Wilson 180). For Haefner, Corinne performs in "public and semi-public spaces"&#8212;of which a good example would be the salon (Haefner 268). This puts Taylor in contrast with Barbauld and Edgeworth, for whom there is "little tension between domesticity and artistic creation" (Wilson 180). The tension is far from ideologically neutral. Wilson points out that in Cowper's <i>The Task</i>&#8212;a paradigm for the sentimental construction of nature in the later eighteenth century&#8212;the sofa is the site of "female industry" (165) that the narrator turns from "to the serious business of composing poetry outdoors among real flowers" (168). In "The Star" the narrator is poised between conventional gendered boundaries between inside and outside. Wilson makes the bold statement that "In women's writing, both child and mother-teacher are socially located, a significant contrast to the Maternal Nature in the canonical male poets" (171). But it is the radical ambiguity of this location&#8212;reducible perhaps to the threshold, the window frame through which the reader may construe the narrator's view of the star&#8212;that is at issue. Writing in the <i>Arcades</i> project about the liminal spaces of Parisian capitalism in the nineteenth century, Walter Benjamin observes that the threshold, in its substantiality (it too fills space), is far more ambiguous a notion than the idea of a boundary (Benjamin 856). "The Star," itself caught in the commodity culture of consumer society, is, pertinently, a meditation on liminality&#8212;here and there, near and far, inside and outside.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Taylor's poetry engages in complex ways with the similarities and differences between domestic and public space, and this complexity bears upon her value for ecocriticism. Is the natural world to be construed as an <i>oikos</i>, a dwelling modeled on domestic space, as economic metaphors of household management imply from deism to Haeckel? Recently such domestic figures have underpinned conservative political economy, as Milton Friedman, for Reagan and Thatcher, displaced John Maynard Keynes. What is ignored in the idea of nature as household is what gets expressed as an ideological feature of republicanism, whose relationship with capitalism has often been problematic. This ideological feature is precisely a negotiation between public and private space. It is the fantasy image of the garden or the salon, what Geoffrey Hartman calls an "outdoor room" (see the epigraph). To conceive of nature as <i>oikos</i> irons out this disturbing wrinkle in the metaphysical opposition of inside and outside, on which depend conservative notions of political economy as household management. There is an aesthetic dimension in which the fantasy object of republican thought escapes its capitalist frame. What it gestures towards is collective rather than private space, and yet an introverted space of contemplation and quiet, like Andrew Marvell's garden, rather than of extraverted noise and bustle (Francis Bacon's idol of the marketplace). Taylor's "The Star" poses the question: is it possible to obtain a space that is simultaneously <i>collective</i> and <i>contemplative</i>?</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<h4>Deconstructing subject-object dualism</h4>
</div>
</li>
<li>
<p>What is an ambient poem? My research for <i>The Poetics of Spice</i> has indicated that just as the musician Brian Eno hypothesized in the mid-1970s that there could be an ambient music, one might imagine an ambient poetry, and that moreover this poetry is of special significant in the Romantic period.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The story of ambient music is something like this. Having survived a car accident, Eno lay in bed unable to listen fully to the record player; a fault had made it play at very low volumes, volumes at which the sound content of the LP was minimized to an almost infinitesimally (in)audible degree. Inspired by this, Eno set about recording music deliberately designed to evoke and/or take place in an "atmosphere," space whose quality had become minimally significant, as one would tint a clear glass or introduce a faint perfume into the surrounding air. The traditional Western view of music sets up an opposition between foreground sound and "background" noise&#8212;sounds that are precisely not foregrounded, as Jacques Attali has concisely demonstrated. Rather than this, Eno proposed that music deconstruct the opposition between foreground and background, or more precisely, between figure and ground. There are Western precedences for such a deconstruction, for example in the work of the medieval music theorist Johannes Tinctoris (Page 1-31). But the sources of ambient music may more properly be traced to orientalist views of non-European ways of experiencing time and space, which affected European music in its Romantic phase.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>David Toop charts the sources for this kind of music as far back as Claude Debussy's visit to the Paris Exposition in 1889, at which he heard the Indonesian Gamelan (Toop 13-22). This was a musical performance whose repetitious structure, improvisational openness and ceremonial properties pointed out a realm of sound entirely different from the teleological, secularized and commodified music heard in nineteenth-century European concert halls. Western discourses, however, have always contained alternative views of what could be done with sound, image and text, views that pertained to figurations of space which employed a more minimal, a more paradoxical, or no notion of dualism between subject and object.</p>
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<p>If the tune for "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is a "folk" tune, it is a paradoxical one: a folk tune with a cosmopolitan reach. The traditional tune associated with "The Star" is "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman," that appeared without words in a 1761 Paris publication, M. Bouin's <i>Les Amusements d'une Heure et Demy</i>. The tune was adapted by Mozart: <i>Twelve Variations on "Ah, vous dirai-je, maman"</i> was published 1785 by Christoph Torricella in <i>Aira Vari&#233;e</i>; according to Fuld, "Beethoven improvised on the theme in his second public concert in Prague in 1798." Fuld states further that "The song came to be sung as <i>ABCDEFG</i> under the title "The Schoolmaster" in 1834." A similar tune has been set to "Baa, Baa Black Sheep," the words for which appeared in print in about 1744 in <i>Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book</i>. The tune is also used in the German "Ist das nicht ein Schnitzelbank? [carpenter's bench]" (593-4).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#4">4</a></sup></p>
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<p>The form of the tune seems banal in its simplicity. It is an ABBA arch of diatonic (traditionally European, post-medieval) harmony that pivots on an opposition between tonic and dominant (the first and fifth notes of the diatonic scale). This is a minimalist version of classical harmony, the harmony with which Mozart and early Beethoven worked. Reminiscent of a modern orchestra tuning up (playing scales, fourths and fifths), or indeed of a child's first experiments with an instrument&#8212;surely this is why it became the tune for <i>ABCDEFG</i> (an "instrument" of language)&#8212;it brings to the fore, like so many of the elements of the lyrics of "The Star," the perceptual-aesthetic dimension in which it is performed. In a word, it is ambient.</p>
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<p>The Romantic period is often thought to be the moment during which the world became especially story-shaped, and if not entirely teleological, then playing with the notions of ends and beginnings in the ways suggested by the "to be continued" openness of the Romance genre. Naturally, it is evident that the notion of ambience may get caught like a deer in the headlights of a postmodern luxury product, its denial of reified time (the historical destiny of the West) in the name of reified space. This is very much the destiny (pun intended) put upon it by Brian Eno. But if it could be shown that a certain articulation of space (subjective and objective genitive) coexisted with the Romanticizing of time, readers could uncover a whole arena of Romantic experience. Ambience could be shown to <i>resist</i> the reification of space in capitalism. For like all dialectical images, ambience at once fills and overspills the ideological frame intended for it by the social structure in which it emerged. Why? Because ambience is what Jacques Lacan would call a <i>sinthome</i>, a metastasized kernel of inconsistent and meaningless enjoyment to which any linguistic frame would sit loose (Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 132, 135-7; <i>Sublime Object</i> 74-5, 76-9).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#5">5</a></sup> I have modified the view of the <i>sinthome</i> insofar as what Lacan applies to an objectal substance could, in an invagination, apply to surrounding space itself. This involves a topological inversion of figure and ground. Imagine the <i>sinthome</i> (the best image would be an open wound) not as figure but as ground: a potent, non-neutral ground, a giant stain.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#6">6</a></sup></p>
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<p>This is why I have chosen to call this essay "a study of a dialectical image." In the work of Walter Benjamin, the images thrown up by capitalism always have some revolutionary potential, if only one knew how to crack them open aright. While it is evocative of the ways in which the world has been covered in flat concrete, shopping malls, vast airports and parking lots, ambience may also provide paradoxical images of a collapse of dualism, disclosing a world where oppositions between human being and nature are erased.</p>
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<p>The Romantic period is also often construed as the apogee of the (masculine) ego, that psychic foreground of modernity, articulated against the background of nature, history, being, and so forth. It is moreover the period in which repetition was literally denigrated in favor of a raced sense of temporality. Hegel's racist philosophy took umbrage at what it construed as the repetitive nature of African culture, fearing the collapse of Western "historical" linearity into this repetition (Snead 75).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#7">7</a></sup> It would be disruptive, then, to find evidence in the Romantic period of an entirely other order of aesthetic experience, an order based on repetition and spatiality. This would be of special interest to Romantic ecology. One of the tricky things about using the "big six" male poets (notably Wordsworth, or all of them from a certain Wordsworthian view) as indices of ecological sensibility, is just how much they appear to insist upon the notion that the self is independent of its world. This figure is linked to the capitalist ideology of abstract freedom, as opposed to the democratic notion of inalienable rights, a view that is in excess of the mode of production that produced it.</p>
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<p>This ideology of separateness, while revolutionary at times, constantly broaches the possibility of ecological destruction, violence and ignorance. To love and care for nature, in this view, would be to have to find some way to treat it like a person. But if people are attenuated to abstract freedom, what kinds of people are they? And the abstract freedom of personhood is always predicated on a concrete/phenomenal ground. Thus the separation of figure and ground must be maintained for the ideology of personhood to persist. The ecological thinker is thus caught in paradox.</p>
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<p>Because this paradox is historically derived, it would be a mistake to confuse the ways in which indigenous cultures treat animals and plants as "people" with an anthropocentrism produced by the idea of abstract freedom. The primitivism of the Romantic view of children suggests that their ontogeny recapitulates cultural phylogeny. The child as shamanic "primitive," is a view that Richardson has shown to be specifically Wordsworthian in its construction of a disempowering "Poetics of Innocence" (Richardson 142-53, esp. 118, 126). It is tempting to condemn lines in "The Star" like "In the dark blue sky you keep, / And often through my curtains peep" (13-14) as nothing but instances of an anthropomorphic and anthropocentric pathetic fallacy. Indeed, the whole poem, whose dominant trope is apostrophe, may be condemned in this way. But there are some reasons to hesitate to do this. What is going on when children are allowed to experience stars as "you" but adults are not? "You" could evoke a political view of nature, despite the observation that the Romantic "indigenizing" of the child is meant to distance them from politics. Moreover, the star's identity is suspended in the sky of the narrator's wondering. If it is anthropomorphic, it is minimally so. In conclusion, is the extent to which literary history condemns anthropomorphism and the pathetic fallacy the extent to which the society in which it exists is imperialist (Hartman 38-9, 67-8; see McGann 76-77)?</p>
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<h4>Paganism and environment: the question of Wordsworth</h4>
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<p>Let us turn our attention to a writer whose work attempts in part to disrupt what is defined as a superficial anthropomorphism, in the name of a poetics that would resist commodity culture. Wordsworth's engagement with the ways in which poems could become consumer objects was not entirely happy. "The World is too much with us . . . getting and spending we lay waste our powers": significantly Wordsworth figures an enervating consumerism not as alienating distance but as threatening proximity, its supplementarity pressing on the authentic self. This is therapeutic Romanticism, designed to cure the ills of the Enlightenment and capitalism (notably the consumer side):</p>
<blockquote>The world is too much with us; late and soon,<br/>
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:<br/>
Little we see in nature that is ours;<br/>
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!<br/>
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;<br/>
The Winds that will be howling at all hours<br/>
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;<br/>
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;<br/>
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be<br/>
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;<br/>
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,<br/>
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;<br/>
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea;<br/>
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.<br/>
(Wordsworth, <i>Poems</i> 7)<br/></blockquote>
<p>However authentically indigenous the narrator wishes to be&#8212;and how much can that be given the cosmopolitan language of Classical deities?&#8212;the narrator is also invoking a more ornamental (in Wordsworth's mind less indigenous) form of poetry.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#8">8</a></sup> The up-gathered winds "like sleeping flowers" are also the rhetorical flowers of ornamentation that Wordsworth's masculinist poetics holds in abeyance.</p>
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<p>There is, however, a suggestion of a fresher poetics in the very phrase "like sleeping flowers." As an invocation of potential energy, the phrase is far from "out of tune" with the natural world. The reader is informed that they are not moved by such phenomena, but surely this is an <i>occupatio</i>, a favorite Romantic trope. We have already been moved by the time we are informed of this. The sleeping flowers are minimally personified, bestowing in their quiet secrecy a stronger appreciation for the ambient world than the trite Triton (surely something of a pun). We will shortly return to Wordsworth's engagement with the aesthetics of the commodity form, but first we shall investigate more closely the salient features of ambient poetics.</p>
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<h4>Three aspects of ambient poetics</h4>
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<p>We have established that ambient poetry deconstructs the difference between figure and ground. In the following three sections, an outline is presented of three specific linguistic effects of ambience: minimalism; the lingual voice; and contact as content.</p>
<div style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-align: center">1. Minimalism: the oral and the lingual</div>
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<p>The element of ambient poetry we have just observed is its concern for minimization (of expression, content or both), which it shares with ambient music. Eno's gramophone was just barely audible. So in the same way ambient poetry makes certain features of reality just perceptible (but nevertheless, they are perceptible). I describe this as minimal signification, and I use Jacques Derrida's notion of the re-mark to delineate this (Derrida, <i>Dissemination</i> 54, 104, 205, 208, 222, 253). The re-mark is that mark that designates a set of marks as such: the mark that differentiates between figure and ground. Zizek explains:</p>
<blockquote>in any series of marks there is always at least one which functions as "empty," "asemic"&#8212;that is to say, which re-marks the differential space of the inscription of marks. It is only through the gesture of re-marking that a mark becomes mark, since it is only the re-mark which opens and sustains the place of its inscription . . . (Zizek, <i>For They Know Not What They Do</i> 75)</blockquote>
<p>When Woodstock "speaks" in the Charlie Brown cartoons, the only reason we can ascertain that the little strokes of black are his speech is the speech bubble around them. This is a minimized degree of speech, not a metaphysical zero-degree (a structuralist concept) but an <i>infinitesimal</i> degree. It is thus not correct to agree with the physicist Brian Greene, who designates the letter as the zero degree of language (Greene 141). "Language-ness," the notion that we are in the presence of language, can get along without letters. This is what ambient poetics seeks to convey. The effect this art produces is not unlike the notion of "quantum fluctuation," a ripple in apparently empty space that re-marks it: a minimalist explanation of the origin of the universe (Zizek, <i>Remainder</i> 229-31, Greene 127-9). Taylor's "Twinkle" is an enactment of this linguistic quantum fluctuation; and "Twinkle, twinkle" even more so. "Twinkle" is practically an onomatopoeia of this fluctuation, if that were not a paradoxical concept that suggested a collision of graphic and sonic elements. Let us consider this further.</p>
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<p>In the mouth, the explosion of "Twin" and the swallow of "kle" present an illusion of language in a minimal, on-off (digital) state. By "language," however, we would here have to include Lacan's idea of "llanguage, lalangue"&#8212;the meaningless fluctuation of tongue-enjoyment (Zizek, <i>Remainder</i> 99-103, 108-9). This meaningless fluctuation is the presence of the Lacanian Real in language. This is the Real observed in the mouth in Lacan's reading of Freud's story of the dream of Irma's injection (Freud, <i>Interpretation</i> 106-20; Lacan 196).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#9">9</a></sup> The illusion of binarism&#8212;that "twin" is "1" and "kle" is "0"&#8212;is undermined by the inescapably analogue nature of the voice: the mouth and tongue that makes "kle" is there. It is what Cixous would call the "souffl&#233;" (Cixous 93-4). The deliquescent "medium" of the voice (in the sense of breath, tongue, lips, mouth cavity, saliva . . . an inexhaustible list) is then an analogue, in the performance of the word "twinkle," for the ambient atmosphere in which stars do twinkle (see the section below, "Placing 'The Star' "). The medium has become the message, in a paradoxical fusion. Voice in Taylor, then, is not to be thought of as beckoning towards phonocentrism (Derrida, <i>Speech and Phenomena</i>). "Twinkle" indicates how the lingual&#8212;my word for the analogue medium, the ambient dimension, of language&#8212;betrays the oral. The <i>lingual voice</i> is my translation of Michel Chion's term, the "voix acousmatique," discussed in the following subsection.</p>
<div style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-align: center">2. The lingual voice</div>
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<p>The infant addressee of "The Star" experiences the mother's voice not as metaphysical <i>presence</i>, but as <i>ambience</i>. How may we account for this theoretically? The second element of ambient poetry is what I have decided to call <i>rendu</i>, after Chion's view of certain kinds of movie in which a special feature of the filmic medium itself is taken as an aspect of its content (Chion 109-11). The making of the medium into a message I take to be a prime condition of ambient poetry.</p>
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<p>One of the more conventional kinds of <i>rendu</i> is what Chion calls the <i>voix acousmatique</i>, commonly employed as the voice-over: "sounds one hears without seeing their originating cause" (Chion 71-3). This voice is not disembodied but the reverse: <i>a voice without a subject</i>. Far from being the phonocentric locus of the logos, as in certain versions of deconstructive theory, this voice is a disturbingly asignifying element of language, which floats free of its content and form. The existentially horrific (or blissful) presence of the voice that floats without a subject and without speech is remarked upon by Zizek in his analysis of Chion (Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 40, 82, 93, 126-7).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#10">10</a></sup></p>
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<p>This lingual voice is present in "The Star" as the singing voice of the carer who sings the lullaby; in the Romantic period indubitably a woman's voice. The voice that floats around the text looking for an object (wondering as it wanders) is the very medium in which the poem, as lullaby, is enacted. This voice is more disturbingly present in Charlotte Smith's great sonnet, "Written in the Churchyard at Middleton in Sussex." The voice that overwhelms that poem finds an object in the raging sea, and this is truly Smith's proclamation of a greatness that is more than conventionally human.</p>
<div style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold; text-align: center">3. Contact as content</div>
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<p>In ambient poetics, the medium in which communication takes place becomes the message that is communicated. In the terms of the structuralist Roman Jakobson's "Closing Statement," the contact becomes the content in ambient literature (Jakobson 355-6). "The Star" exists in a specific performative context: it is a lullaby. It is thus to some extent an illocutionary statement, a statement designed to perform a direct effect as would a spell, a mantra or the "so be it" of "Amen." The repetition of the repetitious "Twinkle, twinkle" in perhaps an imperative mood at the end of the poem (the mood slips between indicative and imperative) is the conjuration of the world in language, a world that hesitates between subject and object. Moreover, illocutionary statement are strictly context specific. As a non-priest, I cannot say "I now pronounce you man and wife" to a pair of strangers on top of a London bus and have my words mean anything.</p>
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<p>The <i>atmosphere</i> in which the message exists&#8212;its ambience&#8212;is a significant element of its meaning. In fact, its context <i>is</i> its meaning; to use the six-part model of communication proposed by Jakobson, the <i>contact</i> (the medium in which the message takes place) has become the <i>message</i> (Jakobson 350-77). The poem "The Star" is its background: the voice of a nurturer (typically one assumes a mother or nurse) lulling a child in its bedroom. It is worth reflecting for a moment on what a powerful tool Jakobson's six-part model of communication is for describing ambient poetry. Jakobson derived the term "phatic" (for communications that foreground the contact) from Malinowski's work on meaning in "primitive" languages. Recapitulating phylogeny as ontogeny, Jakobson states that the phatic is "the first verbal function acquired by infants; they are prone to communicate before being able to send or receive informative communication" (356).</p>
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<p>This is one reason why Lewis Carroll saw fit to parody "The Star" at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party:</p>
<blockquote>Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!<br/>
How I wonder what you're at!<br/>
Up above the world you fly,<br/>
Like a tea-tray in the sky.<br/>
(98-99)<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#11">11</a></sup></blockquote>
<p>The phatic quality of the original means that its phonemes and graphemes may be substituted for others, in the best tradition of nonsense verse. Carroll continues: "Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began to sing in its sleep <i>'Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle -'</i> and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop" (99). The Dormouse's minimalist repetition also attests to the phatic dimension of the original poem.</p>
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<p>Continuing this line of thought, the actual content of the message itself is designed to soothe its addressee into sleep: to perform an effect on a subject rather than contemplate an object. The content of the message is an overdetermination of the soothing repetitions of the nurturing voice, the sinthomic presence of embodied enjoyment that hovers around the poem.</p>
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<h4>Stars in my pocket&#8212;or is that a pocketful of slime?</h4>
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<p>"The Star" complicates the relationship between being and technology envisioned by writers such as Heidegger. The twinkling of the star is not just meaningless "noise" in the cybernetic sense: it is minimally significant. Nevertheless, its twinkling is not useful for the traveler. The star's role as a triangulating device or as a time-piece depends upon its inert objectal status. Its reduction to this is what gives the star its significance, what makes it tell the time. In this form, it <i>is</i> a cybernetic device: cybernetic in the precise sense that this word implies guidance, steerage (Greek: <i>kubernetes</i>, governor, helmsman). The universe is "to hand" (in Heidegger's sense) for the traveler; as convenient as a wristwatch. In one way, the entire poem is "handy" in this way, presenting a miniaturized universe. On the other hand, the poem opens the contemplating mind onto nonconceptual vastness. The star's wondrousness is logically prior to its instrumentality.</p>
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<p>The Ancient Mariner's stars are already objectified as time-pieces: they are "handy" in Heidegger's terminology (Heidegger 69, 71-4).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#12">12</a></sup> It is only at the point of utter exhaustion that the Mariner gives up the notion of imposing conceptuality onto the real. This imposition has recently been read as falling within the territorializing logic of imperialism. David Simpson has argued that the empty, Antarctic vastness towards which the Mariner voyages is an aesthetic (Romantic) version of the imperialist conquest and objectification of the world (Simpson 155-7). In our time this objectification has reached the limit of life-forms themselves, as the genome is mapped, genes are patented, and rainforests are ransacked for biotechnology, in what the ecofeminist Vandana Shiva describes as a colonization of the "inside" of living organisms. Alan Bewell has recently argued that colonialism and imperialism in the Romantic period produced tremendous anxiety about, fascination for, and desire to dominate the earth's life-forms.</p>
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<p>The Mariner's conceptuality is resonant in the sliminess of "a million million slimy things" (<i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner</i> (1798), 4.230); a register picked up again in Sartre's disturbingly phobic <i>Being and Nothingness</i> (601-15).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#13">13</a></sup> The 1817 version's hyperbole is lessened to "a thousand thousand" (4.238). But both instances absorb the gaze into a teeming infinity and collectivity (Sartre: "a sly solidarity," 610). It is at this point, however, that the Mariner experiences some relief from the burden of his guilt: "Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, / They coiled and swam" (271-2; 1817, 279-80) as "The Moving moon went up the sky. / And no where did abide" (255-6; 1817, 263-4)&#8212;without such a strong connotation of telling the time. The snakes are still slimy, but they are not to be abjected (and subsequently objectified). Their sliminess is not only the revenge of objectivity ("the revenge of the In-itself," as Sartre puts it, 609), but also an invitation to look more carefully, to wonder. The "things" become "snakes."</p>
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<p>I am sucked into a culinary reference here, especially as it pertains to Coleridge's Romantic opposition between poetic <i>hypsilatos</i> (sublimity, power) and <i>gluchotes</i> (sweetness), also caught up in his anti-slavery writing on sugar. Sartre declares that the revenge of the In-itself is threatening to the masculine subject: "the sugary death of the For-itself (like that of a wasp which sinks into the jam and drowns in it" (609). The sugariness of Taylor's poem is an indication of its objectal ambience&#8212;an immersive sliminess that threatens to drown the figure in the ground. The Mariner's temporary solution to the problem of his guilt and isolation is an immersion in the aesthetic experience of <i>gluchotes</i>: a sugary sentimentality whose gaze is down, as opposed to the sublime upward gaze of the masculine mountain-climber. This is an entirely unexpected solution given Coleridge's linkage, in the mid-1790s, of sugar with softness, artifice, luxury and cruelty (Morton, "Blood Sugar").</p>
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<p>The problem of human beingness, declared Sartre and Lacan, is the problem of what to do with one's slime (one's shit): "The slimy is <i>myself</i>" (Sartre 609). Ultimately, is sliminess not the sacred, the taboo substance of life itself? The question of ecology, ultimately, is also bound up with what to do with pollution, miasma, slime of all kinds: with things that glisten, twinkle and decay. Should radioactive waste created by the nuclear bomb factory at Rocky Flats (about eight miles away from Boulder, Colorado) be swept under the Nevada carpet of an objectified world, a salt deposit that was declared in the 1950s to be safe, but in the 1990s has been found to leak (the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, or WIPP); how about the planned destination for spent fuel rods from reactors, Yucca Mountain in New Mexico? What does one do with the leakiness of the world? Deep green notions such as Nuclear Guardianship (as advocated by Joanna Macy and Kathleen Sullivan) suggest that poisonous things, like the plutonium whose "twinkling" release of poisoned light takes tens of thousand of years to cease, should be stored above ground in monitored retrievable storage; moreover, that a culture, indeed a spirituality, would have to grow up around the tending of this abjected substance. This is fitting: spirituality is not an escape from, but a taking care of, the abject. It should, incidentally, be clear that this view of "nature" is radically different both from the New Age and from the standard Cartesian dualism. While in these views, nature is a mysterious harmony or an automatic machine, in this essay's Zizekian view (a synthesis of Schelling and Lacan), nature is the existential life substance (Zizek, <i>Remainder</i> 218-20).</p>
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<p>This all may seem rather far away from twinkling stars. But the semiotic implications of twinkling are entirely relevant to this discussion. What is disturbing about ambient signification is its minimalism: what is horrifying about slime is that it glistens as well as disrupting the boundary between figure and ground (that is the basis for the subject's self-positing in Sartre). We cannot self-posit; we are embedded in the slimy atmosphere in which stars twinkle. Twinkling and glistening ("being-glossy") are the visual equivalent of muttering or whispering without words. The twinkling star is the objective correlative of the lingual voice.</p>
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<p>Taylor's star, like the Mariner's water snakes, is "in the real"; the narrator perceives it as such&#8212;which of course goes beyond concept ("How I wonder what you are"). It is so ontologically prior to its being a clock; and temporally prior to this in the singing of the nursery rhyme. And more significantly still it <i>returns</i> to being this, even with a vengeance ("Though I know not what you are"; stronger even than a choric repetition of the first verse). In this Taylor achieves one of the goals of the ambient artist: to reproduce, simulate or "render" the real (in Chion's terminology). Consider "found art": the <i>objet trouv&#233;</i> points out the gaps between what Lacan calls the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. The star is in the poem a hole in the symbolic that limns the Real: about as close to the Real as Lacan allows language to approach. As such it is a miniature version of the Wordsworthian "spot of time," the traumatic disruption forming the piece of grit that makes the pearl of the subject in the oyster of experience. From the point of view of the subject, this trauma is a hole, a tear in the symbolic tissue. But this absence masks a more bizarre kind of presence. The star is also a meaningless twinkling, the matheme for which would be (, the symbol for the phallus and for "woman": what "does not ex-sist" in patriarchal language (see Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 135). It is a sinthome, a meaningless sprout of enjoyment, the inconsistent object around which ideology swirls-is it a timepiece? is it a compass? how is it "for" us? Taylor brilliantly returns the star to its sinthomic presence.</p>
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<h4>Placing "The Star"</h4>
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<p>When seen from outer space stars do not twinkle. One can verify this in an age more technologically "advanced" than the Romantic period. In that period , the only way to do this was from the utopian dimension of the Enlightenment&#8212;the impossible point of view of space itself, used to good effect in the opening notes to Percy Shelley's <i>Queen Mab</i>. By mentioning the speed of light and implying theoretically vast size of the universe, Shelley establishes a radically nonanthropocentric point of view, in imitation of Milton.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#14">14</a></sup> This is the place to stand from which one might move the earth, as that poem's epigraph from Archimedes states. And still, in the space age, this impossible point of view is a feature of technotopian literature, such as Arthur C. Clarke's novelization of <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>, whose guiding trope is a constant othering of the point of view: "seen from this (new, unexpected or impossible) viewpoint, the subject appeared as such and such. . ."</p>
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<p>The view, however, of stars from the surface of the earth is quite different, insofar as subtle irregularities in the density, humidity and temperature of the ambient atmosphere affect the way in which a beam of starlight travels through this medium. The irregularities refract the photons, making them dance back and forth. The technical term is "scintillation," connoting minimal signification, the minutest re-marking that makes a wink of a photon. A humid&#8212;or human&#8212;climate induces twinkling (stars in Antarctica, for instance, do not twinkle). The figure of twinkling is thus evidence of ambience, a paradoxical "ground" for this figure, as the atmosphere is <i>in front of</i> the star.</p>
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<p>Atmosphere is itself a consequence of the massiness of the earth; in other words, its gravity. Isaac Newton had made of space a vacuum, and turned matter into objectified solidity, and rendered space and time abstract and separate containers of the universe. Before Einstein, who asserted the radical inextricability of spacetime from the universe itself; and quantum physicists, who showed that there is no such thing as perfectly empty space; Romantic poets, with their figuration of atmosphere, and Romantic philosophers, with their interest in phenomenology, asserted the radical in-ness of reality. This is ultimately a line of thought that leads to Lacan's notion that there is no metalanguage; and Derrida's statement, "Il n'y a pas d'hors texte" (Derrida, <i>Of Grammatology</i> 158).</p>
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<h4>Glitter, glitter, empty city: Wordsworth and "negative ecology"</h4>
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<p>The "diamond"-like twinkling of the star in Taylor's poem, however, is a feature not only of physical space but also of ideology. Benjamin observes a very similar twinkling in the phantasmagoric space of the Paris arcades, an "ambiguity of <i>space</i>" created by their "abundance of mirrors": "the whispering of gazes fills the arcades" (Benjamin 877-8). With this in mind, we might helpfully compare "The Star" with Wordsworth's sonnet "Composed upon Westminster Bridge." Wordsworth's time and place markers ("Sept. 2, 1802") are ambient tropes employed later by writers such as Gary Snyder ("Bomb Test"), influenced also by the walking Zen poetry of Basho. They also call to mind the environmental art of contemporary figures such as Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy (whose work now inhabits the Lake District, Lancashire and Southern Scotland). Could we make a case for Wordsworth as an ambient poet, even though for Keats he was the poet of ego <i>par excellence</i>?</p>
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<p>We have seen in a previous section how Wordsworth attempts to flee the realm of commodified objects, only to find himself, like Alice approaching the Looking-Glass House, back where he started. Is this, however, entirely unfruitful? The sonnet on "getting and spending" is in the sequence that includes a highly original contemplation of city life, "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge," one of Wordsworth's strongest examples of ambience. Wordsworth's empty city already has the ambience of transitional spaces such as the airport, the hotel or the bay, spaces for which Brian Eno conceived ambient music. This music's power to disturb such spaces rather than tranquilize them should be noted: when Eno's <i>Ambient 1: Music for Airports</i> began to be used in Chicago O'Hare's United Tunnel, it was soon withdrawn because of passengers' complaints of heightened anxiety. Wordsworth's sonnet is equally disturbing, and tranquil.</p>
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<p>The experience of the empty city is, as Raymond Williams noted, an entirely fresh "structure of feeling," (Williams 151-2, 233-4) and ambient music arose out of this structure: consider the techno music that emerged in the deracinated industrialism of Detroit, or the drum and bass that developed in the emptied spaces of South-East London, spaces inhabited by the black working class. The minimalist aesthetic of Wordsworth's poem resembles strikingly pieces of music such as Goldie's "Inner City Life" (or the significantly named "Still Life") or the quiet speed of Derrick May and LTJ Bukem, poised hauntingly between an enjoyment of deracination and a critique of it. Hartman has noted the minimalism of <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, yet specifically pits this <i>against</i> industrialism (Hartman 207). But the picture is more complex than that.</p>
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<p>Williams observes that Wordsworth's city is that of (republican) civilization, in excess of industry: "before the noise of the working day, and also before the smoke of its later development" (Williams 152). It is the role of what Williams calls "before" that is so subtle. Here is the poem:</p>
<blockquote>Earth has not any thing to shew more fair,<br/>
Dull would he be of soul who could not pass by<br/>
A sight so touching in its majesty;<br/>
This City now doth like a garment wear<br/>
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,<br/>
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie<br/>
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;<br/>
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.<br/>
Never did sun more beautifully steep<br/>
In his first splendor valley, rock, or hill;<br/>
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!<br/>
The river glideth at his own sweet will:<br/>
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;<br/>
And all that mighty heart is lying still!</blockquote>
<p>The literally breathtaking enactment of "lie / open" (6-7), where the poem opens to the space of the page itself (a device with which Mallarm&#233; is usually credited for having discovered), is a brilliantly minimal presentation of the sinthomic voice, an open mouth without content. This was noted even by the Wordsworth-phobic F.R. Leavis (Leavis 118). Thus the body emerges in Wordsworth's disembodied poem. Though it is legible in the negative (it is not "in" the words or "on" the page), this is a remarkable phenomenon.</p>
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<p>The paratactic list, "Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples" (6), alludes to Milton's Hell, "Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death" (<i>Paradise Lost</i>, 2.620).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#15">15</a></sup> One is tempted to declare that while Milton presents the "rotten world" of slimy, natural death (L&#233;vi-Strauss 1, 142-3, 151-2, 169-70), Wordsworth offers the "burnt world" of supernatural death. But the "lying open" of these liminal spaces to the natural world of "fields" and "sky" (7), and the ghostly presence of the sinthomic voice in the blank space of the page, that has become part of the sonnet, reveals far more of the existential substance of <i>life</i>. This life-in-death is the flip side of what Freud's thinking on Eros ("builder of cities") reveals, in his insight that life yearns towards, in James Strachey's poetic translation, "the quiescence of the inorganic word" (Freud, <i>Beyond</i> 86; Hartman 191).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#16">16</a></sup> This very suggestive phrase is more than what Freud might be suggesting, however: "quiescence" implies something still living, where "inertia" would have brought it to a dead stop; one is reminded of Keats's "quiet breathing" ("A thing of beauty is a joy forever. . ." <i>Endymion</i> 1.5). "Composed upon Westminster Bridge," then, is disturbingly erotic in a similar way: it conveys half-life, undeath, life's infinitesimal degree.</p>
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<p>It is not even as simple (as straightforwardly complicated) as that, however. The <i>double entendre</i> of "lie / Open" conveys an open secret, an exclusion that has been included&#8212;an encryption. What we are seeing is the ghostly substantiality of capital itself, as the potential energy of the city lies dormant in the early morning hours. The capitol becomes capital. The secret of this form is itself, lying open in all the vast emptinesses of modern living. What we have here is <i>negative ecology</i>, like negative theology (see Zizek, <i>Sublime Object</i> 11-16; Bull 144-5).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#17">17</a></sup> Production has ceased, but value is omnipresent. This is clarified in the istic glistening of the buildings, "All bright and glittering in the smokeless air" (8). "Bright and glittering" has an effect similar to "Twinkle, twinkle": we are being made aware of an atmosphere, howsoever minimal and refined ("smokeless"). Figure&#8212;the vertical masts and towers&#8212;is flattened into ground&#8212;fields and sky&#8212;through the word "lie." In Taylor, the star's appearance at the window takes it out of the vertical realm.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#18">18</a></sup> Paratactic lists, the sinthomic voice, the liminal presence of atmosphere, horizontality: are we not in the realm of a Romanticism defined as feminine by such writers as Jeffrey Robinson and Jerome McGann (Robinson 66-74)?<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#19">19</a></sup> And is this not a striking conclusion to draw concerning Wordsworth?</p>
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<p>It is capital, then, that charges modern space with ambience, creating a force field of which nature (the Lake District that Wordsworth offers as a retreat from modernity) is actually an analogue rather than a counter-image. The narrator of the sonnet becomes a minimalist version of what was later called the <i>fl&#226;neur</i>, analyzed in Benjamin's reading of Paris, wandering amidst metastasized capital&#8212;but the businesses are not even open yet (for an allusion to Wordsworth on the city in Benjamin's writing on Baudelaire, see Benjamin 231, 968; see Morton, <i>Spice</i> 235).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#20">20</a></sup></p>
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<p>"The Star," with its portable indigenousness, is a product of the very same historical moment. Furthermore, its ambience is as double-edged as Wordsworth's: revealing a <i>belonging</i> that is also a <i>longing</i>. If "culture" is designed "<i>convert longing into belonging</i>" (Hartman 180), to make space into place, then its products are paradoxical; for they unwind place into space again, belonging into longing. The tables in Redfish, a Boulder restaurant, create ambience: they are so huge that one cannot hold hands across them. Symbols of the proprietor's wealth (and metonymically the diner's), they are also symbols of division and longing. Wordsworth's De Chirico urban emptiness, and Taylor's empty intimate sky, cast the same spell, bestowing the feel of alien nation.</p>
<div style="text-align: center">
<h4>House music: the poetics and politics of wondering</h4>
</div>
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<p>We may conceive of "The Star" as oscillating between <i>speculation</i> and <i>wondering</i>; or to put it in more loaded ideological terms, between French <i>civilisation</i> and German <i>Kultur</i>; surely the Romance and Germanic origins of the two words I have chosen are not accidental (Hartman 211, Eagleton, <i>The Idea of Culture</i> 9). Speculation assumes the ability to jump to the impossible view of the other. Wondering implies radical location in space and time. Speculation may be noted in the view of the sun "When he nothing shines upon" (6); and the focalization through the mind of "the traveller in the dark" (9), and his use of the star to triangulate his position, which implies being able to jump to the view of the other. This is why Rousseau wants to educate Emile by having him get lost in a forest where he will be forced to triangulate to find his way home; a Spartan version of Enlightenment education. Wondering is legible, however, in the gap between knowing and experiencing: "Though I know not what you are, / Twinkle, twinkle, little star" (19-20).</p>
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<p>"When he nothing shines upon" is also a slippage between nothing at all, and some (minimally substantial) nothingness; and this second category could either mean "the absence of something" or "the presence of nothing." On the one hand, the line evokes the empiricist/skepticist problem of the tree falling in the forest without an observer. This implies that there cannot be a "world out there," if by that phrase one meant a truly existing (independent, single and lasting) realm of objects. On the other hand, the figure implies that the sun is still shining despite its unseenness. This evokes another kind of ambience, the sort suggested by Lacan in his writing on the symbolic order when he describes the signified as a "presence made of absence" ("une pr&#233;sence faite d' absence," Lacan, "Fonction," 276). The ultimate ghostly presence, in patriarchy, is the phallus. In that case, the reader might wonder whether the star is a feminine counterpart to this absent phallic sun; a dangerous supplement that fatally complicates the whole notion of a tight opposition between presence and absence, subject and object.</p>
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<p>"How I wonder" (2) is an exclamation, a self-reflexive remark that draws attention to wondering in itself. Wondering what "you" are posits "me." I cannot introduce Martin Buber's notion of I-thou relationships at this point, as this assumes a metaphysical priority of "thou" in relation to "I." One might more helpfully read "How I wonder" as a minimalist figuration of Romantic subjectivity. One could not assume, however, that this is a form of solipsism: that would be to assert the ontological priority of "I"; and evidently the poem deals not with blank otherness, but with "you." Moreover, the imagined presence of the traveler complicates any sense of "I-it" or "I-thou." Some might object that little children do not want to do philosophy: what is the point, anyway, of squeezing all of these implications out of a nursery rhyme? But to assume that children are not interested in philosophy is to reproduce the anti-intellectual and primitivist Romantic view of childhood.</p>
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<p>Heidegger's view of wondering is the reproduction of the attitude of a stupefied peasant (Eagleton, <i>Literary Theory</i> 64), the anti-intellectual enjoyment of place that Nazism installed at the very heart of a murderous rationalism. But in rejecting m, we should not reject introversion as if it could be identified entirely with Heideggerian thought. For it is this introverted contemplation that was precisely what the Nazis condemned "as being an offence against community feeling," as Freud condemned it as "an autoerotic, 'narcissistic' attitude" (Jung 487). This quiet wondering is what Geoffrey Hartman celebrates in the poetry of Wordsworth. Giving the poet too much political power, Hartman cites Wordsworth as the reason England did not have a strong t moment. But to his credit, Hartman's praise of wondering is a significant counterblast to the instrumental reason that dominates bureaucratized intellectuality in the modern academy. Hartman writes:</p>
<blockquote>we [academic intellectuals] are too defensive about the contemplative life. Its <i>otium</i> is not otiose. We should recognize more firmly its achievements and its relation to a certain spaciousness, especially that of a shrinking rural world. Not to heed Wordsworth's understanding of the ecology of mind jeopardizes the bond between nature and mind. The spacious ambience of nature when treated with respect, allows physical and emotional freedom; it is an outdoor room essential to thought and untraumatic (that is, relatively unforced) development.</blockquote>
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<p>For Hartman, as objective space collapses, subjective "spaciousness" remains potent. I wonder about the validity of Hartman's use of "room" as safe haven, sanctuary. It would be perilous to obtain a metaphysical distinction between inside and outside from the paradoxical image of an "outdoor room." This notion of the room is too poverty-stricken, attached to an idea of private property (however rooted in a natural outside) that Hartman sees as essential to liberty (Hartman 76-7). This is a basic tenet of republicanism, whose image of liberty is the garden (reduced in modern America to the lawn), as in Andrew Marvell's garden at Nun Appleton. And could not the idea of the outside as room serve to reproduce, howsoever subtly, the Nazi notion of <i>Lebensraum</i>? Even if not, one cannot help thinking of the paucity of the "lounge" or "living room" as a model for a contemplative space&#8212;one of the central inadequacies of Brian Eno's view of the role of ambience. Surely common land, or a street corner, in our time a locus of racist arrests (and of Miles Davis's <i>On the Corner</i>, a strongly ambient work)&#8212;or Westminster Bridge&#8212;are more potent spaces?</p>
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<p>Moreover, surely the paradox of inside as outside&#8212;a form of M&#246;bius strip&#8212;is as traumatic as it is soothing? One function of ambience is to permeate and trouble the inside with the outside. Wordsworth's poems and ambient music (laced with atmospheric samples) are often consumed indoors; it is the opposite of the cozy externality of Auden's "Out on the lawn I lie in bed" (1). It is no surprise that Auden's poem is more blatantly republican than Wordsworth's Westminster Bridge sonnet or "The Star," with its imagery of homoerotic brotherly bonding:</p>
<blockquote>Equal with colleagues in a ring<br/>
I sit on each calm evening,<br/>
Enchanted as the flowers. (13-15)</blockquote>
<p>Auden also employs a striking ecotopian allusion to Isaiah 11, the passage about the lion lying down with the lamb (22-24), in a blend of Judaeo-Christian and republican idyll reminiscent of Shelley (Morton, <i>Shelley</i> chapter 3). This is another version of emotion recollected in tranquillity (Wordsworth, <i>Wordsworth</i> 598). Ambience may therapeutically displace the spontaneous overflow; but it is also what recollects it. If it were too safe and soothing, surely some forms of ambient music, music for bourgeois lounges that is ("high" versions of Muzak), could remind one of what Adorno said of the Nazis' use of Beethoven at Auschwitz to drown the screams (Adorno 365). Tranquillity must recollect the real, then, as all avant garde art from Wordsworth to Rauschenberg tries to incorporate the real. Or as a lullaby, designed to soothe, also opens the child to the lingual and sidereal real.</p>
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<p>Hartman continues: "To curtail [contemplation] adds to the damage done to the culture of civil society by the totalizing and controlling demands of political religions" (Hartman 158). I suggest instead that the real problem is aggressive conceptual mind; including the mind that condemns politics because of a certain concept of nature. This aggressive mind also includes <i>contemplative idealism</i> of a certain kind, the kind that asserts ego in its highest form as the nation-state. This kind of contemplation is to be distinguished from the more open, and more quiet, and more troubling introverted contemplation that Hartman describes. Might there be a way of inhabiting a place that did not entail murder and destruction? It might be wise to find one, lest the White Man's Burden is all the most powerful on this earth have either to accept or reject. And it might be wise not to do this in a New Age invasion of "Eastern" philosophy. In fact, it would be good to discover it in the very cultures from which the toxic thought has emerged that the world is objectified stuff, and that the subject is absolutely free abstraction (see Jung 490-1).</p>
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<p>Hartman's "outdoor room" is precariously poised between the republican idea of freedom in ownership of land&#8212;that seems so sober, so calm&#8212;and the fantasy of the <i>indoor garden</i> visited by Aladdin in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. Wordsworth himself was keen to naturalize this tale in <i>The Prelude</i> 5 (Richardson 122-24). A door that opens into a further inside that is also an outside&#8212;this is none other than the <i>mise-en-ab&#238;me</i> of the literary text, against which Wordsworth tries to struggle, manfully: "Up! up!. . and quit your books" ("The Tables Turned," 3). Coleridge's dream of the Arab in <i>The Prelude</i> 5 is Wordsworth's own complication of inside and outside, as the apocalyptic "fleet waters" provide an ambient music that wakes the dreamer up to the reality of the encroaching waves (5.136).</p>
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<p>In the tale of Aladdin, instead of the text of nature, we have the text as nature (as fantastic garden of jewels). Likewise Taylor's "like a diamond" makes of nature a fantastic luxury item, handy as jeweled fruit in an interior garden. It recurs in James Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i>: "The heaventree of stars, hung with humid nightblue fruit" (Joyce 573). The fantasy of the "outdoor room," by contrast, attempts to avoid the luxurious squandering evoked in Aladdin's jewel garden. It is something of a republican image&#8212;only this is a paradoxical republic of introversion, with no people around. Hartman, in his attempt to address the issue of Wordsworthian ecology, and his reluctance to fall back on images that would evoke <i>Kultur</i>, has to plump for something that is not fully open to its secret: the secret of femininity (auto , luxury, writing, expenditure).</p>
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<p>The outdoor room appears to be the antinomy of the "garden room" in the <i>Arabian Nights</i>, insofar as the former is natural, while the latter is a figure of artifice and luxury (and fitted into the eighteenth century English discourse of luxury). In <i>Wordsworth and the Figurings of the Real</i>, David Simpson has shown the extent to which Wordsworth wished to guard against luxury in his figuring of a fragile republic in the Lake District. The asymmetry between republicanism and luxury, two of the great discouses of the long eighteenth century, is poignant: they are implicated in one another, but also exclude one another. This has, moreover, proved a real stumbling block for a progressive ecology that does not fall back upon royalist motifs of natural hierarchy and benevolent stewardship; one recalls here Simpson's arguments about the authoritarianism of the category of the "natural" (xvii). If we examine Wordsworth closely, however, we find that luxury and republicanism are harder to keep apart than he might consciously have wished. But really, these images resemble each other intricately in Wordsworth's own writing. If, in <i>The Prelude</i> 5, the <i>Arabian Nights</i> are like <i>The Prelude</i> (the oral transmission of an organic lineage, 520-1), then the reverse holds true: <i>The Prelude</i> must resemble the <i>Arabian Nights</i>. The rather empty outside of the "outdoor room" is nothing but a masculinized version of the feminized luxury garden, the interior of jewel trees and autoerotic lamps.</p>
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<p>On the one hand, Hartman, like Wordsworth most of the time, is warding off femininity. On the other, surely what Hartman is also trying to ward off is Heidegger's notion of <i>Dasein</i>, the philosophical basis for a dangerously localist politics of <i>Volk</i>. But if being out in nature is also being in a room of jewels, then the difference between artifice and nature on which the localism of <i>Dasein</i> is predicated is deconstructed. There is, in the unfortunate phrasing of the Vietnam War, "no there there." <i>Dasein</i> is a heffalump, a phallic ghost, presence made of absence, or rather from the graphic traces of that absence in the world. Winnie the Pooh and his frightened friend Piglet circle a tree in the Hundred-Acre Wood they call home (an accidentally Heideggerian location). The footprints of absence, formed by the subject's anxious self-circling (literally "wondering what you are"), ignore the substance around which the circles are made, the very world-stuff of which <i>Dasein</i> is only the ized reflection. This world-stuff is between two things. If one wants to be an essentialist, it is the scintillating horror/bliss of existential angst, that which the late Merleau-Ponty calls the flesh, inseparable from the world of perception. But it is also the trace of writing as it were in an analog medium, the medium of the world itself, which is also a palimpsest of traces. It is a longing for presence rather than a belonging to presence: <i>diff&#233;rance</i>.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#21">21</a></sup></p>
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<p><i>Dasein</i> is a peculiarly anthropocentric and anxious form of being: it is specifically human being (as opposed to star being, or cloud being). One of Heidegger's figures for it is of a telephone call from an anxious mother to an absent but anxious child&#8212;a child somewhat older than the audience for "The Star" (Ronell 27-8).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#22">22</a></sup> Heidegger's view of technology, then, is of an external prosthesis, a dangerous supplement of authentic beingness. But what if technology were exemplified by a lullaby? In Taylor's poem, the star exceeds human being just as it is caught in it; it is a timepiece and a stile for the traveler; but it is also a wondrous phenomenon, something that opens the mind towards it in itself. What is striking about "The Star" is not so much is evocation of being-thereness, as its portability: this is a lullaby that creates, enacts, conjures being-there no matter where it is sung. It is a refrain that creates territory (Deleuze and Guattari 310-50). But it is also a song that opens territory, relaxes being-thereness, out into space. Being here is as portable as a song, which is more than can be said for a national anthem. "The Star" thus broaches a non-essentialist form of indigenousness. In Jakobson's outline of the six-part model of communication, talking birds are said to share just one of the model's functions: the phatic (foregrounding the contact; Jakobson 356). We are back at the exploration of minimalist language&#8212;the "speech" of Charlie Brown's friend Woodstock the bird. The phatic is then the point at which language opens human being to the natural world (which, for shamanic cultures, is simply a larger assemblage of "people"). Future ecocritical work will thus have to take the phatic dimension of language into account.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html#23">23</a></sup></p>
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<p>"The Star" proposes&#8212;more, it enacts&#8212;the fact that human beings are radically "in" time and space&#8212;indeed, unreified spacetime&#8212;in the same sense as one might be "in" love. The grown-up word for this inhabiting is undoubtedly history. But if history becomes destiny, it is segregated from spatiality and forced to wander with the White Man's Burden. And if spatiality becomes culture in its most reified sense, the Nazi sense of Kultur, then time is effaced and apocalyptic genocide beckons. It would be ridiculous, and ridiculously hard, to make of "The Star" a fantasy kernel for t or imperial ideology. Its presentation of glittering spacetime exceeds the ideological frames in which it could be captured. In the future it will be less dangerous to think a deep-ecological poetics through this kind of feminine Romantic writing than it has been to think it through Heidegger, whose fatal mistake was to reify environment, that which could not (even on his own terms) be so solidified. Dangerously necessary, for otherwise ecology is hamstrung by the notions of subject and object in the name of which the earth is being destroyed.</p>
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<p>In <i>The Fateful Question of Culture</i>, Hartman warns against what Wallace Stevens called a "cure of the ground"&#8212;a "back to nature" or "back to basics" approach that we often associate with ecological poetics and politics (Hartman 27). In concluding this essay, let us consider how ecology and ecopoetics may be articulated. What is most subversive about both "The Star" and Wordsworth's "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge" is not their return to a ground, to nature: not what one might traditionally understand as the anti-supplemental characteristics of Romantic poetry. <i>What is subversive is their presentation of surplus enjoyment</i>, that confuses the difference between figure and ground, and opens the possibility of ecological awareness. In Taylor, this is the surplus of the sinthomic voice. In Wordsworth, it is the surplus of a surplus: the secret enjoyment of secret surplus value (capital). In addition, by <i>reversing belonging into longing</i>, fulfillment into unfulfillment, these poems counteract the territorial aggression that turns space into place. As I demonstrate in the final chapter of <i>The Poetics of Spice</i>, the orientation of poetry in the Romantic period <i>towards</i> rather than away from surplus has a potentially liberating ecological effect. In order to celebrate nature without risking turning it into private property (the outdoor room) or to <i>Dasein</i>, ecocriticism must embrace the culturally feminine aspects of space in all their meaningless surplus inconsistency. In Coleridge's terms, this would be jump into the subject&#8212;dissolving stickiness of aesthetic <i>glutchotes</i>. Perhaps "The Star" will become the nonnational nonanthem of this kind of ecological awareness.</p>
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</ol>
<p style="font-style: italic">I would like to thank James McKusick for encouraging me to write this, and Thomas Riis (Music, the University of Colorado at Boulder) for his help.</p>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Abram, David. <i>The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World</i>. New York: Pantheon, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Adorno, Theodor W. <i>Negative Dialectics</i>. Trans. E.B. Ashton. New York: Continuum, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Attali, Jacques. <i>Noise: The Political Economy of Music</i>. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.</p>
<p class="hang">Auden, W.H.. <i>Collected Poems</i>. Ed. Edward Mendelson. London: Faber and Faber, 1976.</p>
<p class="hang">Benjamin, Walter. <i>The Arcades Project</i>. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Bewell, Alan. <i>Romanticism and Colonial Disease</i>. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Bois, Yve-Alain and Krauss, Rosalind E. <i>Formless: A User's Guide</i>. New York: Zone, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Buber, Martin. <i>I and Thou</i>. Trans. Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Scribner, 1958.</p>
<p class="hang">Bukem, LTJ. <i>Logical Progression</i>. Good Looking Records, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Bull, Malcolm. "Where is the Anti-Nietzsche?" <i>New Left Review</i> 3 (second series). May-June 2000. 121-45.</p>
<p class="hang">Carroll, Lewis. <i>The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass</i>. Ed. and introd. Martin Gardner. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965, 1979.</p>
<p class="hang">Chion, Michel. <i>Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen</i>. Ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Cixous, H&#233;l&#232;ne. "Sorties." <i>The Newly Born Woman</i>. Eds. H&#233;l&#232;ne Cixous and Catherine Clement. Trans. Betsy Wing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 (French 1975).</p>
<p class="hang">Clarke, Arthur C. <i>2001: A Space Odyssey</i>. Buccaneer, 1968.</p>
<p class="hang">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <i>Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i>. Ed. H.J. Jackson. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.</p>
<p class="hang">Davis, Miles. <i>On the Corner</i>. Columbia Records, 1972.</p>
<p class="hang">Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, F&#233;lix. <i>A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia</i>. Trans. Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Derrida, Jacques. <i>Dissemination.</i> Trans. Barbara Johnson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Of Grammatology</i>. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>La voix et le ph&#233;nome: introduction au probl&#232;me du signe dans la ph&#233;nom&#233;nologie de Husserl</i>. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1967.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Truth in Painting</i>. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Eagleton, Terry. <i>The Idea of Culture</i>. Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Literary Theory: An Introduction</i>. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Eno, Brian. <i>Ambient 1: Music for Airports</i>. EG Records, 1978.</p>
<p class="hang">Fay, Elizabeth. <i>Becoming Wordsworthian: A Performative Aesthetic</i>. Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Freud, Sigmund. B<i>eyond the Pleasure Principle</i>. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. New York: Liveright, 1950.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Civilization and Its Discontents</i>. Trans. James Strachey, introd. Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Interpretation of Dreams</i>. Trans. and ed. James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1959.</p>
<p class="hang">Fuld, James. <i>The Book of World Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk</i>. 3rd ed. New York: Dover, 1985.</p>
<p class="hang">Galperin, William H. <i>The Return of the Visible in British Romanticism</i>. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Gigante, Denise. "After Taste: The Aesthetics of Romantic Eating." Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">Goldie. <i>Timeless</i>. Metalheadz, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Goldsworthy, Andy. <i>Andy Goldsworthy: A Collaboration with Nature</i>. New York: Abrams, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">Greene, Brian. <i>The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory</i>. New York and London: Norton, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Haefner, Joel. "The Romantic Scene(s) of Writing." <i>Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837</i>. Eds. Joel Haefner, Carol Shiner Wilson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. 256-73.</p>
<p class="hang">Hartman, Geoffrey. <i>The Fateful Question of Culture</i>. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Heidegger, Martin. <i>Being and Time</i>. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996; German 1953.</p>
<p class="hang">Jakobson, Roman. "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics." <i>Style in Language</i> Ed. Thomas A. Sebeok. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1960. 350-77.</p>
<p class="hang">Joyce, James. <i>Ulysses</i>. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler, with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior. New York: Random House, 1986.</p>
<p class="hang">Jung, Carl G. "The Difference Between Eastern and Western Thinking." <i>The Portable Jung</i>. Ed. and with an introduction by Joseph Campbell. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. Harmondsworth: Viking Penguin 1976.</p>
<p class="hang">Keats, John. <i>The Complete Poems</i>. Ed. John Barnard. London: Penguin, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Lacan, Jacques. "Fonction et champ de la parole et du langue en psychanalyse." <i>Ecrits</i>. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1966. 237-322.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Le r&#234;ve de l'injection d'Irma." <i>Le s&#233;minaire de Jacques Lacan</i>. Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Editions du Sueil, 1978. 2.193-204.</p>
<p class="hang">Leask, Nigel. "'Wandering through Eblis'; Absorption and Containment in Romantic Exoticism." <i>Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830</i>. Eds. Timothy Fulford and Peter Kitson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 165-88.</p>
<p class="hang">Leavis, F.R.. <i>The Living Principle: "English" as a Discipline of Thought</i>. London: Chatto and Windus, 1975.</p>
<p class="hang">L&#233;vi-Strauss, Claude. <i>The Raw and the Cooked: Introduction to a Science of Mythology: 1</i>, Trans. John and Doreen Weightman. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1969 (French 1964).</p>
<p class="hang">Long, Richard. <i>Mirage: Richard Long</i>. London: Phaidon, 1998.</p>
<p class="hang">Lovelock, James. E. <i>Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth</i>. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Macy, Joanna. <i>World as Lover, World as Self</i>. Foreword by Thich Nhat Hanh. San Francisco: Parallax Press, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">May, Derrick. <i>Innovator</i>. Transmat, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">McGann, Jerome. <i>The Poetics of Sensibility: A Revolution in Literary Style</i>. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Mellor, Anne. <i>Romanticism and Gender</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. <i>Phenomenology of Perception</i>. Trans. Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge &amp; Kegan Paul, 1962, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Milne, A.A. <i>The House at Pooh Corner</i>. New York: Dutton, 1961.</p>
<p class="hang">Milton, John. <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Ed. Alistair Fowler. London and New York: Longman, 1968, 1971.</p>
<p class="hang">Morton, Timothy. <i>The Poetics of Spice: Romantic Consumerism and the Exotic</i>. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World</i>. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 1998, 2000.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Blood Sugar." <i>Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780-1830</i>. Eds. Timothy Fulford and Peter Kitson. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 87-106.</p>
<p class="hang">Newton, Isaac. <i>Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, and His System of the World</i>. Trans. Andrew Motte (1729) and Florian Cajori. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.</p>
<p class="hang">Page, Christopher. "Reading and Reminiscence: Tinctoris on the Beauty of Music." <i>Journal of the American Musicological Society</i> 49:1. Spring, 1996. 1-31.</p>
<p class="hang">Pratt, Mary Louise. <i>Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1992.</p>
<p class="hang">Richardson, Alan. <i>Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780-1832</i>. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Robinson, Jeffrey. <i>Romantic Prescences</i>. Barrytown, N.Y.: Station Hill Press, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Ronell, Avital. <i>The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech</i>. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.</p>
<p class="hang">Ross, Marlon. <i>The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry</i>. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.</p>
<p class="hang">Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. <i>Emilius; Or, an Essay on Education</i>. Trans. Nugent, 2 vols. London: printed for J. Nourse and P. Vaillant, 1763.</p>
<p class="hang">Sartre, Jean-Paul. <i>Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology</i>. Trans. and ed. Hazel Barnes. New York: the Philosophical Library, 1956, 1969.</p>
<p class="hang">Shelley, Percy. <i>Shelley: Poetical Works</i>. Ed. Thomas Hutchinson. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.</p>
<p class="hang">Shiva, Vandana. <i>Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge</i>. Boston: South End Press, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Simpson, David. <i>Wordsworth and the Figurings of the Real.</i> Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1982.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "How Marxism Reads <i>The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.</i>" <i>Samuel Taylor Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Complete, Authoritative Texts of the 1798 and 1817 Versions with Biographical and Historical Contexts, Critical History, and Essays from Contemporary Critical Perspectives</i>. Ed. Paul H. Fry. Boston and New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1999. 148-67.</p>
<p class="hang">Smith, Charlotte, Turner. <i>The Poems of Charlotte Smith</i>. Ed. Stuart Curran. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Snead, James. "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture." <i>Black Literature and Literary Theory</i>. Ed. Henry Louis Gates. London and New York: Methuen, 1984. 59-80.</p>
<p class="hang">Snyder, Gary. <i>The Gary Snyder Reader: Prose, Poetry, and Translations</i>. Washington: Counterpoint, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Sullivan, Kathleen. <i>This New Promethean Fire: Radioactive Monsters and Sustainable Nuclear Futures</i>. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Lancaster, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Taylor, Jane. <i>Prose and Poetry</i>. Introd. F. Barry. London: H. Milford, 1925.</p>
<p class="hang">Toop, David. <i>Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds</i>. London and New York: Serpent's Tail, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Williams, Raymond. <i>The Country and the City</i>. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, 1975.</p>
<p class="hang">Wilson, Carol Shiner. "Lost Needles, Tangled Threads: Stitchery, Domesticity, and the Artistic Enterprise in Barbauld, Edgeworth, Taylor, and Lamb." <i>Re-Visioning Romanticism: British Women Writers, 1776-1837</i>. Eds. Joel Haefner, Carol Shiner Wilson. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. 167-90.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William. <i>Poems, in Two Volumes, and Other Poems, 1800-1807</i>. Ed. Jared Curtis. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1983.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>William Wordsworth</i>. Ed. Stephen Gill. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1984; repr. 1986, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Zizek, Slavoj. <i>For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor</i>. London and New York: Verso, 1991; repr. 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and Related Matters</i>. London and New York: Verso, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture</i>. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991, 1992.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Sublime Object of Ideology</i>. London and New York: Verso, 1989, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology</i>. Durham: Duke University Press, 1993.</p>
<hr/>
<p style="text-align: center" class="hang"> </p>
<h4 style="text-align: center">Links</h4>
<p class="hang"> </p>
<p class="hang">
<a href="http://www.hyperreal.org">http://www.hyperreal.org/</a>
</p>
<p class="hang">A good example of one of the very many sites on ambient music.</p>
</div>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="indent"><a name="1"> </a>1&#160;&#160;See William H. Galperin, <i>The Return of the Visible</i>.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="2"> </a>2&#160;&#160;One of the most suggestive formulations is Elizabeth Fay's: "If William's picturesque belongs to the valley and bower, the sacred grove is where he situates the meeting of the picturesque and the beautiful with the sublime, a meeting that transmutes the feminine into the transcendent and brings the masculine sublimity of mountains home to pasture" (184).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="3"> </a>3&#160;&#160; For a discussion of the significance of Sappho in the Romantic period, see McGann 94-116.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="4"> </a>4&#160;&#160; "You may also find it interesting that Shinichi Suzuki advocates Mozart's Variations on 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' as the first piece a child should learn in the Suzuki Method of musical training, which he theorizes as a form of language acquisition" (<i>Nota bene</i> from Melissa Sites, text editor of 'Romanticism and Ecology,' to the author).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="4"> </a>5&#160;&#160; In general, the seventh chapter of <i>Looking Awry</i> is a sustained analysis of the rhetoric and politics of the sinthome. The term is a pun on the St. Thomas, who had to insert his fingers into the gaping wound in the side of the risen Christ, who had returned to convince Thomas of His reality. For Lacan, the sinthome is neither symptom nor fantasy but "the point marking the dimension of 'what is in the subject more than himself' and what he therefore 'loves more than himself'" (Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 132)</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="5"> </a>6&#160;&#160;This would square well with the vaginal connotations of the <i>sinthome</i>, in patriarchy a <i>wound</i> that is also a <i>space</i>. See Zizek's discussion of Ridley Scott's film <i>Alien</i> (<i>Sublime Object</i> 79). It also squares with Lacan's view of subjecthood as a hole in the real caused by the removal of a "little bit" of it, that nevertheless results in the <i>framing</i> of reality (see Jacques-Alain Miller's explanation in Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 94-5).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="6"> </a>7&#160;&#160;I am grateful to Jeremy Braddock for discussing this with me.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="7"> </a>8&#160;&#160;The allusion is to Spenser's <i>Colin Clouts Come Home Again</i>, 281-83, 245-48&#8212;"pleasant lea"; "Triton blowing loud his wreathed borne"; "coming from the sea" alludes to <i>Paradise Lost</i> iii.603-604, "call up unbound / In various shapes old <i>Proteus</i> from the sea" (Wordsworth, <i>Poems</i> 411).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="8"> </a>9&#160;&#160;"Le fond de cette gorge, &#224; la forme complexe, insituable, qui en fait aussi bien l' objet primitif par excellence, l' ab&#238;me de l' organe f&#233;minin" ("R&#234;ve," 196).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="9"> </a>10&#160;&#160;In particular, consider the following: "Insofar as it is not anchored to a specific source, localized in a specific place, the <i>voix acousmatique</i> functions as a threat that lurks everywhere . . . its free-floating presence is the all-pervasive presence of a <i>nonsubjectivized object</i>, i.e., of a voice-object without support in a subject serving as its source. It is in this way that <i>d&#233;acousmatisation</i> [the linkage of an acousmatic voice with a subject] equals <i>subjectivization</i>" (Zizek, <i>Looking Awry</i> 127).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="10"> </a>11&#160;&#160;I have omitted the prose between lines 2 and 3.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="11"> </a>12&#160;&#160; Heidegger's term is <i>Zuhandenheit</i>.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="12"> </a>13&#160;&#160; Sartre's view of woman/sex as a "hole" (613-4) is relevant to the earlier discussion of space as invaginated <i>sinthome</i> (see note 5). For parallels between Romantic and existential disgust, see Denise Gigante, "After Taste: The Aesthetics of Romantic Eating."</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="13"> </a>14&#160;&#160; See for example <i>Paradise Lost</i>, 3.588-90 (where Satan is reduced to a figure seen through a telescope), 8.153-8 (where humans are viewed as not the only inhabitants of the cosmos).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="14"> </a>15&#160;&#160; This is something of an evocation of the <i>hellish</i> ambience of the city, as noted in Benjamin's study of nineteenth-century representations of Paris (10). Benjamin was fond of Percy Shelley's <i>Peter Bell the Third</i> in this regard (370, 449-50).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="15"> </a>16&#160;&#160; In Hartman's haunting phrase, "we call peace what is really desolation" (191). See Freud 30-1, 47, 67, 76 (on the "Nirvana" principle).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="16"> </a>17&#160;&#160; For Marx, "classical political economy is interested only in contents concealed behind the commodity-form, which is why it cannot explain the true secret, not the secret behind the form but the <i>secret of this form itself</i>" (Zizek, <i>Sublime Object</i> 15). Malcolm Bull's very suggestive subversion of Nietzsche offers a view of "totalized" society that contains all those species that Nietzsche would categorize as "subhuman." Wordsworthian negative ecology would not, for Bull, be negative enough: it is far from philistine and thus subject to Nietzsche's nihilistic valuation of value itself.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="17"> </a>18&#160;&#160; Rosalind Krauss has recently argued that this kind of "horizontality" is a feature of abstract expressionist visual art (Bois and Krauss 93-103). Evidently Wordsworth was very interested in such effects in the literature of an earlier moment of the avant-garde; compare the way in which the narrator in "Tintern Abbey" wishes to connect the landscape with "the quiet of the sky" (8) in a view that first, unlike the picturesque is radically "inside" its own frame, and secondly undoes the difference between horizontal and vertical that Krauss names as establishing a difference between human and animal, and is caught up in the commodity ism of paintings themselves (hung vertically in galleries).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="18"> </a>19&#160;&#160; Robinson declares of the lines "This City now doth like a garment wear / The beauty of the morning": "Essentially Thomsonian, the line (and poem) personifies the city in order to allow variety to be absorbed by the beautifying feminizing unifying perspective of the composed and composing meditation" (100).</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="19"> </a>20&#160;&#160; Convolute J on Baudelaire (231): "From the eighth section of Baudelaire's 'Salon de 1859.' There one finds, apropos of Meryon, this phrase: 'the profound and complex charm of a capital city which has grown old and worn in the glories and tribulations of life.' A little further on: 'I have rarely seen the natural solemnity of an immense city more poetically reproduced. Those majestic accumulations of stone; those spires "whose fingers point to heaven"; those obelisks of industry, spewing forth their conglomerations of smoke against the firmament; those prodigies of scaffolding 'round buildings under repair, applying their openwork architecture, so paradoxically beautiful, upon architecture's solid body; that tumultuous sky, charged with anger and spite; those limitless perspectives, only increased by the thought of all the drama they contain;&#8212;he forgot not one of the complex elements which go to make up the painful and glorious d&#233;cor of civilization . . . . But a cruel demon has touched M. Meryon's brain . . . . And from that moment we have never ceased waiting anxiously for some consoling news of this singular naval officer who in one short day turned into a mighty artist, and who bade farewell to the ocean's solemn adventures in order to paint the gloomy majesty of this most disquieting of capitals.' Cited in Gustave Geoffroy, <i>Charles Meryon</i> (Paris, 1926), pp. 125-126. Note 10 : 'The phrase "those spires 'whose fingers point to heaven'" (<i>montrant du doigt le ciel</i>), translates a line from Wordsworth's poem 'The Excursion' (book 6, line 19), itself a citation from Coleridge." Surely the antecedent of this figure is "Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (968), but it is more radical than the vertical fingers, indicating not a world of life-forms but a transcendental, theistic realm.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="20"> </a>21&#160;&#160; In the second chapter of <i>The Fateful Question of Culture</i>, Hartman very eloquently establishes what for him is the necessarily phantom nature of this longing&#8212;its embodiment, for Hartman, would precipitate disaster. But to make this phantom transcendent would in a sense be to <i>locate</i> it. This is quite the opposite of what we are trying to establish: the figuration of "here" without location.</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="21"> </a>22&#160;&#160; Readers intrigued by Ronell's linkage of technology and schizophrenia in the figure of distant speech (in this essay, acousmatic speech), may be interested to know that researchers at the University of Colorado have recently discovered a receptor in the hypothalamus (in the brain) that is sensitive to the difference between foreground and background noise. When this receptor malfunctions, people are unable to distinguish between foreground (meaningful) sound (for example, speech) and ambient sound; hence the schizophrenic phenomenon of hearing voices in radiators, car engines, animals. . .</p>
<p class="indent"><a name="22"> </a>23 &#160;&#160;When exploring the radically <i>new</i> environment of the space and moon, the first words between the American astronauts and Houston were phatic: "You can go ahead with the TV now, we're standing by . . . ." This explains the popularity in contemporary ambient electronic music of samples from radio talk shows ("Hello, you're on the air"), scanned telephone conversations and other phatic phenomena.</p>
</div>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/morton-timothy">Morton, Timothy</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/668" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecocriticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1465" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">deconstruction</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1288" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">structuralism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/tags/romantic-poetry" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Romantic poetry</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/sartre" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sartre</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/heidegger" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Heidegger</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/derrida" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Derrida</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/taylor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Taylor</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/samuel-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1291" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ambience</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1098" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Poetics</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1292" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">phatic</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1243" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environment</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1833" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">community</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1293" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">introversion</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/jung" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jung</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1294" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">feminine</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1295" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">masculine</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1296" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">twinkle twinkle little star</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/carol-shiner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Carol Shiner</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/walter-benjamin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Walter Benjamin</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/milton-friedman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Milton Friedman</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/jacques-lacan" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jacques Lacan</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/alan-bewell-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Alan Bewell</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/brian-eno" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Brian Eno</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/roman-jakobson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Roman Jakobson</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/andrew-marvell" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Andrew Marvell</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/david-simpson-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">David Simpson</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/michel-chion" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Michel Chion</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/jane-taylor" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Jane Taylor</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/geoffrey-hartman" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Geoffrey Hartman</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/timothy-morton" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Timothy Morton</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/joel-haefner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Joel Haefner</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/samuel-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-city-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">City:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/boulder" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Boulder</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/paris" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Paris</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/city/prague" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Prague</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/city/london" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">London</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/sussex" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Sussex</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/nevada" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Nevada</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/new-mexico" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">New Mexico</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/province-or-state/colorado" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Colorado</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/antarctica" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Antarctica</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:05:39 +0000rc-admin22493 at http://www.rc.umd.eduRomanticism and Ecologyhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/index.html
<div class="field field-name-field-index-banner field-type-image field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><figure class="clearfix field-item even"><img typeof="foaf:Image" class="image-style-index-banner" src="http://www.rc.umd.edu/sites/default/files/styles/index_banner/public/ecology_banner%5B1%5D.jpg?itok=oS2-xVjY" width="640" height="213" alt="Romanticism and Ecology, Edited by James C. McKusick" title="Romanticism and Ecology, Edited by James C. McKusick" /></figure></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><div id="IndexContent">
<h2 class="TOC">Table of Contents</h2>
<ul id="TOCContent">
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/about.html">About this Volume</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/mckusick/mckusick_intro.html">"Introduction"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">James McKusick, University of Maryland, Baltimore County</li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/mckusick/mckusick_intro.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/nichols/nichols.html">"The Loves of Plants and Animals: Romantic Science and the Pleasures of Nature"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Ashton Nichols, Dickinson College </li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#nichols">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/nichols/nichols.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/stroup/stroup.html">"Henry Salt on Shelley: Literary Criticism and Ecological Identity"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">William Stroup, Keene State College </li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#stroup">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/stroup/stroup.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html">"Wordsworth's 'The Haunted Tree' and the Sexual Politics of Landscape"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Tim Fulford, Nottingham Trent University </li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#fulford">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html">"'Sweet Influences': Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Kurt Fosso, Lewis & Clark College</li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#fosso">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html">"Gender, Environment, and Imperialism in William Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Kevin Hutchings, University of Northern British Columbia</li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#hutchings">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html">Essay</a></li>
<li class="EssayTitle"><a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html">"'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' as an Ambient Poem; a Study of a Dialectical Image; with Some Remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth"</a></li>
<li class="AuthorInfo">Timothy Morton, University of Colorado at Boulder</li>
<li class="ChildContent"><a href="/praxis/ecology/abstracts.html#morton">Abstract</a> | <a href="/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html">Essay</a></li>
</ul>
</div></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-edited-by field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Edited By:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:EDT"><a href="/person/mckusick-james-c">McKusick, James C.</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-resource-technical-editor field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Resource Technical Editor:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/person/byrne-joseph">Byrne, Joseph</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/866" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">French Revolution</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/887" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">liberty</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-52 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Resource (Taxonomy):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/praxis-series/romanticism-ecology" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Romanticism &amp; Ecology</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:05:38 +0000rc-admin22489 at http://www.rc.umd.eduGender, Environment, and Imperialism in William Blake's Visions of the Daughters of Albionhttp://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/ecology/index.html">Romanticism and Ecology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h2 style="text-align: center">Romanticism &amp; Ecology</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">Gender, Environment, and Imperialism in William Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#*">*</a></sup></i></h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center">Kevin Hutchings, University of Northern British Columbia</h4>
<p><i>Important note: This essay contains hypertext links to The William Blake Archive. Please read the conditions of access listed on the <a href="http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake/"><i>Archive's</i> Welcome Page</a></i> before <i>using the links provided below.</i></p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>As numerous critics have noted in passing, William Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i> (1793) explicitly correlates Bromion's brutal appropriation and rape of Oothoon's body with a figurative but no less violent "rape" of the natural world.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#1">1</a></sup> It is this correlation and some of its philosophical implications that I will examine here in detail; for, somewhat like Albion in Blake's late prophecies, Oothoon represents in <i>Visions</i> both a person and a landscape, and nothing can happen to her human portion that does not also affect the environmental aspect of her identity. Hence, while <i>Visions</i> deals primarily with the issue of human slavery (in its related patriarchal and colonial contexts), it is also very much concerned with the parallel conquest and "enslavement" of nature, the methodical extension of what the Baconian philosopher Joseph Glanville was pleased to call, in his <i>Plus Ultra</i> of 1668, "the <i>Empire</i> of <i>Man</i> over <i>inferior</i> Creatures" (188).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#2">2</a></sup></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>At the opening of <i>Visions</i>, we abruptly learn that the "ENSLAV'D ... Daughters of Albion" send "sighs toward America," and that the woeful Oothoon similarly longs for America's "soft soul" (1:1-3).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#3">3</a></sup> Clearly, what these enslaved characters long for is political emancipation, the opportunity to live according to the libertarian ideals commonly associated with the American Revolution. What is less apparent is the geo-generic aspect of <i>Visions</i>' references to America: the characters' implicit understanding of America as an idyllic pastoral retreat. Historically, as Leo Marx has noted, the age of discovery introduced into the Arcadian myth "a note of topographical realism," and, from the Elizabethan era until the late nineteenth century, Europeans tended to view America in Arcadian terms as a vast and unspoiled garden of "'incredible abundance'" (Marx 47, 37-40).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#4">4</a></sup> From such an idealizing standpoint, the New World becomes a truly green and pleasant land, a pristine space wherein political freedom is supported in part by nature's Edenic plenitude.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>At the time that Blake wrote and engraved <i>Visions</i>, however, America was hardly as free and gentle as such idealism would have it. On the contrary, as <i>Visions</i> emphatically demonstrates, America's pastoral image helped to disguise the fact that much of its colonial prosperity depended upon slavery and the relentless expropriation of Indigenous lands. If, as numerous critics have argued, Oothoon's plight in <i>Visions</i> allegorizes not only the condition of British women under the yoke of patriarchy but also the plight of the New World's enslaved blacks and oppressed Native Americans,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#5">5</a></sup> she is also at one level of Blake's allegory the indivisible body and "soul of America" itself, a vital "continent longing ... to be cultivated by free men, not slaves or slave drivers" (Erdman, <i>Prophet</i> 227). Hence, when Bromion rapes Oothoon, he violates and expropriates both her human portion <i>and</i> its related environmental aspect. Such violence is implicit in Bromion's arrogant post-rape address to Oothoon:</p>
<blockquote>Thy soft American plains are mine, and mine thy north &amp; south:<br/>
Stampt with my signet are the swarthy children of the sun:<br/>
They are obedient, they resist not[.]<br/>
(1:20-22)</blockquote>
<p>Since the eighteenth century, the word "rape" has often been used to describe human acts of environmental plunder and destruction,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#6">6</a></sup> a terminological employment that suggests, as ecofeminist writer Susan Griffin observes, "a profound connection between the social construction of nature and the social construction of woman" (225). While Blake never directly employs the word "rape" in <i>Visions</i>, he could not have been oblivious to the Enlightenment rhetoric that described scientific inquiry&#8212;which Bacon believed would restore humanity to its originary position of "empire" over nature&#8212;as a "penetration" of nature's "womb" (<i>Novum Organum</i> 114, 50, 100).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#7">7</a></sup> In <i>Visions</i>, however, Blake further complicates this equation of sexual and environmental violence by considering it in light of a colonialist racism that enslaves non-Europeans, forcing them to become the very instruments of environmental subjugation in the New World. Thus, when Bromion brags of his slaves that "They are obedient, they resist not," his grammatically ambiguous plural pronouns can be seen to gesture not only toward the antecedent "swarthy children of the sun" but also toward the "soft" or pliable landscapes he expropriates in the previous line. Clearly, Bromion sees his mastery of humans and landscapes as roughly equivalent: both, he suggests, offer themselves <i>willingly</i> to his authority. Given the overt violence of his imperialist rapacity, however, we must see in Bromion's self-aggrandizing myth of total mastery an underlying element of fear and paranoia; for, to revisit Griffin's discussion of rape in its sexual and environmental significations, "why does one have to conquer what is not challenging, fearsome, and in some way, wild, falling as it does outside the idea of mastery and control?" (225). Undoubtedly, Bromion's rape of Oothoon involves a complex and multifaceted act of sexual, cultural, and environmental conquest.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In order to stabilize his overarching authority over Oothoon, Bromion resorts to the age-old practice of stereotyping, accusing Oothoon of "harlot[ry]" (1:18, 2:1). As an exercise of power, this stereotyping has complex and ambivalent implications; but its immediate consequences are dire. First of all, we must recall that, traditionally, "women called whores or who are prostitutes are not 'protected' by other men from rape" (Griffin 224); hence, by depicting Oothoon as a harlot, Bromion, her rapist, effectively robs her of recourse to protective justice. Second, Bromion's stereotyping encourages Theotormon to reject Oothoon's freely proffered love as a manifestation of harlotry and "defilement," a rejection that drives her almost to despair. Subsequently, Oothoon proceeds to defend herself from the accusation of "impurity" by marshalling numerous rhetorically powerful arguments from nature; but, as readers have often noted, this strategy of argumentation is decidedly perilous. In attempting to prove her moral and sexual purity by way of reference to the world of nature, Oothoon seems unaware, among other things, that contemporary thinkers often accused Dame Nature herself of harlotry.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#8">8</a></sup></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>While Bromion's deployment of the harlot stereotype helps him to consolidate his brutal authority over Oothoon's body (in both its human and terrestrial aspects), his stereotyping also inadvertently demonstrates the discursive ambivalence of his position as an agent of patriarchy and imperialism in <i>Visions</i>. As Homi K. Bhabha has argued, the stereotype, as a structure of predication, is fraught with contradiction: on the one hand, it is supposed to articulate a naturalized, self-evident truth, something that "goes without saying"; and yet, the fact that the stereotype depends upon continual reiteration (as in Bromion's repeated reference to Oothoon's harlotry) suggests that its authority is always less than comfortably stable. Hence, in a discussion that is highly relevant to the sexual/colonial allegory of <i>Visions</i>, Bhabha remarks that "the stereotype . . . is a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always 'in place,' already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated," as if the ostensibly self-evident truths it attests to "can never really, in discourse, be proved" (66).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>An illuminating contemporary instance of the ambivalence of colonialist stereotyping can be found in what critics widely acknowledge as one of the major textual sources for <i>Visions</i>, Captain John Gabriel Stedman's <i>Narrative of a Five Years Expedition, Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam</i> (1796), for which Blake engraved approximately fourteen illustrations just prior to composing and etching <i>Visions</i>.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#9">9</a></sup> In a discussion of Surinamese sexual practice, Stedman touches upon many of the sexual concerns and issues Blake addresses in <i>Visions</i>: false modesty, chastity, adultery, harlotry, and the uninhibited gratification of sexual desire. Although in the unpublished version of <i>Narrative</i> Stedman privately fears that his observations "will be highly censured by the Sedate European Matrons" (1790; 47), he nevertheless candidly remarks, in a published passage worth quoting at length, that in colonial Surinam most European men acquire female slave-mistresses. These women, Stedman claims,</p>
<blockquote>all exult in the circumstance of living with an European, whom in general they serve with the utmost tenderness and fidelity, and tacitly reprove those numerous <i>fair-ones</i> who break through ties more sacred and solemn. Young women of this depiction cannot indeed be married . . . as most of them are born or trained up in a state of slavery; and so little is this practice condemned, that while they continue faithful and constant to the partner by whom they are chosen, they are countenanced and encouraged by their nearest relations and friends, who call this a lawful marriage, nay, even the clergy avail themselves of this custom without restraint. . . . Many of the sable-coloured beauties will however follow their own <i>penchant</i> without any restraint whatever, refusing with contempt the golden bribes of some, while on others they bestow their favours for a dram or a broken tobacco-pipe, if not for nothing. (1796; 1.25-26)</blockquote>
<p>Based on the evidence offered in <i>Visions</i>, one might speculate that Blake would have perused this passage (if he had in fact read Stedman's text<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#10">10</a></sup>) with a certain amount of qualified admiration and approval. Just as the enslaved Oothoon roundly condemns the "subtil modesty" of the "modest virgin knowing to dissemble / With nets found under thy night pillow, to catch virgin joy, / And brand it with the name of whore" (6:7, 10-12), Stedman subtly condemns the hypocrisy of the many "<i>fair-ones</i>" of Europe whose pretended feminine modesty, his italics more than hint, is at odds with their actual sexual desires and practices. Indeed, by "follow[ing] their own [sexual] <i>penchant</i> without any restraint whatever," the "sable-coloured beauties" of Stedman's narrative behave very much like Blake's Oothoon, who actively and unashamedly seeks sexual gratification with Theotormon, one of her colonialist oppressors. A glance at the unpublished version of Stedman's text is even more revealing. Here, just as Oothoon indicts "hypocrite modesty" (6:16)&#8212;and not the active pursuit of sexual desire&#8212;as the true model of "selfish" harlotry (6:16-20), Stedman's slave-women do "not hesitate . . . to pronounce as Harlots" those who refuse to follow the "laudable Example" of a sexuality that seeks unrestrained gratification (1790; 48).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>But when Stedman concludes the unpublished version of his panegyric to the sexuality of Surinamese slave-mistresses by calling these women "the disinterested Daughters of pure Nature" (1790; 48), he reveals the philosophical subtext supporting his heavily revised published argument, invoking in the process the kind of idealistic primitivism that greatly troubled and often offended Blake. Not only does such idealism efface the historical actuality of the female slaves' parentage (since these women are "mostly . . . creole" [1790; 47], they are primarily the daughters not of nature but of female African slaves and male European slave-masters like Bromion); by invoking the concept of "pure Nature" (and thus the various nature/culture dualisms that the concept tended to carry in the late eighteenth century), Stedman's ethnographic discourse on sexuality implicitly supports age-old stereotypes associating women and black people with corporeality rather than spirit, emotion rather than reason, licentiousness rather than license. Finally, it is important to note the generic influences on Stedman's sexual ethnography, for in its implicit tendency to locate corruption in the colonial metropolis and "purity" or freedom in the green world of Surinam, Stedman's discussion partakes of the apparent dichotomy of the pastoral idyll, which, by distinguishing country from city (and, by extension, nature from culture), tends often to efface the ideological practices inevitably constituting our views of the "natural" world.</p>
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<p>Certainly Oothoon finds it impossible in <i>Visions</i> to convince her beloved Theotormon that the physical body&#8212;or the natural world of which it is a material part&#8212;can be "pure." In stark contrast to Bromion (who represents the overtly sensual, gluttonously appetitive, and perversely self-gratifying aspect of European colonialism), Theotormon is grimly ascetic,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#11">11</a></sup> his moralizings aligning him in <i>Visions</i>' colonial allegory with a self-righteous and hypocritical imperialist evangelism. His distance from all things deemed natural and his obsession with a distant, disengaged, and otherworldly sky-God are implicit in his very name (whose roots, <i>theos</i> and <i>thereos</i>, mean "God" and "spectator" respectively [Hoerner 132]). A devoted follower of the <i>via negativa</i>, the "negative way" of ascetic consciousness, Theotormon believes he must deny all things earthly, including especially the "natural" impulses comprising his sensual aspect, in order to achieve his ultimate goal of union with a "wholly other" God. Theotormon's ascetic disavowal of corporeality causes him to prefer solitude over socially engaged action (7:10), a behavioral preference culminating in his strangely narcissistic obsession with his own internal thought processes (3:23; 4:3-11). It is appropriate, then, that <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.01&amp;java=yes">Blake's design to plate 1</a> (the frontispiece in most copies of <i>Visions</i>) depicts Theotormon in a crouching position, arms covering his eyes, ears, and mouth, completely closed to the life of the senses (Gillham 195).</p>
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<p>This is not to suggest that Theotormon's asceticism is successful or without important contradiction. Crucially, for example, Blake figures Theotormon's original response to Oothoon's ostensible harlotry in terms of <i>earthly</i> phenomena: "Then storms rent Theotormons limbs; he rolld his waves around. / And folded his black jealous waters round the adulterate pair" (2:3-4). While Theotormon is clearly subject in these lines to "natural" passions (figured by the violent "storms" that rend his limbs), his subsequent ability to manipulate the waves and waters raised by these internal storms evinces a significant degree of control over this aspect of his identity. But he achieves this self-mastery at a significant price. Because his God is entirely transcendent, Theotormon must completely deny the visionary and redemptive possibilities of material existence, possibilities suggested among other things by Oothoon's complex proposition that "every thing that lives is holy" (8:10). According to Theotormon's negative theology, in other words, all of nature's seeming attractions can only be distractions; and since he has learned to see his passions as aspects of natural rather than spiritual being, he must constantly "cleanse" himself via acts of self-expurgation and penance. Hence, in the <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.09&amp;java=yes">design to plate 9</a>, Theotormon flagellates his body with a three-thonged whip, whose knots, as Erdman has noted, "look uncannily like the heads of the Marygold flowers" in the <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.03&amp;java=yes">design to plate 3</a> (<i>Illuminated</i> 134)&#8212;iconographic evidence that the natural forms inspiring multiplicitous vision in Oothoon (see 1:6-7) can only be vehicles of self-torment for Theotormon. Significantly, after binding Oothoon and Bromion "back to back in Bromions caves," Theotormon assumes a position at the cave's entrance, where he sits "wearing the threshold hard / With secret tears" (2:5-7). Theotormon's tears are "secret," for, as a practitioner of asceticism, he must deny his emotions, which he attributes to the sensual or embodied portion of being. Such denial thus becomes another form of self-mortification as Theotormon "wear[s] the threshold hard," figuratively clothing himself in a penitential garment of stone&#8212;a version of the ascetic's hairshirt&#8212;whose petrific, impenetrable surface signifies Theotormon's extreme self-enclosure, his unwillingness to entertain any open encounter with earthly otherness.</p>
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<p>There can be no doubt that Oothoon is severely traumatized by the violation and stereotyping she undergoes at the hands of Bromion, as well as by Theotormon's self-righteous and insensitive treatment of her. Consider, for example, her subsequent invocation of Theotormon's eagles:</p>
<blockquote>I call with holy voice! kings of the sounding air,<br/>
Rend away this defiled bosom that I may reflect.<br/>
The image of Theotormon on my pure transparent breast.<br/>
The Eagles at her call descend &amp; rend their bleeding prey . . . .<br/>
(2:14-17)</blockquote>
<p>In this passage, Oothoon's rhetoric of purity and defilement reveals her unwitting capitulation to Theotormon's ascetic dualism (which opposes chastity to harlotry), while her use of the verb "rend" in her instruction to Theotormon's eagles implies, most appallingly, an invited repetition of Bromion's act of rape. Indeed, since Bromion's earlier rending of Oothoon with his clamorous "thunders" (1:16) implies a regal exercise of elemental control, we may align him directly with Theotormon's eagles, the "kings of the <i>sounding</i> air." Hence, while highlighting the mutual implication of Theotormon's theology and Bromion's colonialist praxis, Oothoon's invocation of and encounter with the eagles demonstrates the extent to which her own pursuit of "purity" tends inadvertently to presuppose and perpetuate the most profound violence.</p>
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<p>Such violence recalls the eagle's traditional figural association with imperialist politics. During the course of Western history, this predatory bird had served emblematic functions in such countries as Rome, Austria, France, Germany, and Russia; and, in 1782, only eleven years prior to the production of <i>Visions</i>, the United States adopted the eagle as emblem for its official seal (Vogler 30-31n). Since at one level of <i>Visions</i>' political allegory Oothoon is America, and since Bromion rapaciously expropriates her "soft American plains" and the regions comprising her "north &amp; south" to his material empire, we must consider the eagle in <i>Visions</i> as a figure for empire, the political and geographical entity before which colonized individuals must "open their hearts" or be forcefully "rent" in opposition. Hence, in both the text and in the <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.06&amp;java=yes">design to plate 6</a> the eagles' rending of Oothoon's breast functions to emphasize the latter's political subjection. In this context, "the soft soul of America"&#8212;America's liberatory idealism&#8212;is devoured by the brutal reality of America as a burgeoning empire being built upon the backs, and written in the blood, of slaves.</p>
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<p>It is most appropriate, then, that Oothoon's account of her rending by the predatory eagles is directly preceded <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.05&amp;java=yes">on plate 5</a> by an illustration of a black slave-laborer, whom Blake depicts nearly prostrate upon the ground, lying beside an almost horizontal, grotesquely blighted tree. In the approximate symmetry of their spatial design, these juxtaposed human and arboreal figures evince an iconographic equation. On the one hand, the oppressed slave, valued primarily as a physical instrument of enforced labor, is reduced to the status of a mere natural object (like the tree), becoming, from the master's standpoint, simply another aspect of the exploitable physical environment. (Blake further emphasizes this process of "othering" by depicting the slave's arms in such a manner that they appear to be rooted, like tree limbs, to the ground.) On the other hand, insofar as the near-horizontal form of the blighted tree in turn mirrors the prostrate form of the slave, the tree can be seen to represent a natural world that has, like the African laborer, been destructively enslaved. The message seems straightforward enough. As competing imperial powers rush to exploit new resource-bases, importing to the New World the mercantilist practice of human slavery, the environmental problems Blake associates with the metropolitan center&#8212;a place of "cities turrets &amp; towers &amp; domes / Whose smoke destroy[s] the pleasant gardens &amp; whose running Kennels / Chok[e] the bright rivers" (FZ 9:167-69; E390)&#8212;are extended to the New World's colonized landscapes.</p>
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<p>In a context wherein the transcendental eagle of imperialist politics emblematizes the violation of enslaved peoples <i>and</i> landscapes, all creatures&#8212;both human and non-human&#8212;are potentially affected. Consider, for example, the figural significance of <i>Visions</i>' "jealous dolphins," the creatures Bromion invites to "sport around" Oothoon directly after he rapes her (1:19). How, one might ask, do dolphins&#8212;traditional symbols of philanthropy, love, and salvation (Baine 206)&#8212;come to be so negatively anthropomorphized in Blake's allegory of colonialism? To seek an answer to this question, it will be helpful to return to Stedman's <i>Narrative</i>. In recounting the events of his voyage from Europe to Dutch Guiana, Stedman writes that the interval was rendered "exceedingly pleasant ... by the many <i>dolphins</i> or <i>dorados</i>, ... beautiful fish [which] seem to take peculiar delight in sporting around the vessels" (1796; 1.9). (Notice that Blake's dolphins also "sport around" in <i>Visions</i>.) Continuing his discussion in a more philosophical mode, Stedman goes on to remark that</p>
<blockquote>The <i>real</i> dolphin, which is of the cetaceous kind, was <i>anciently</i> celebrated in poetic story on account of its philanthropy and other supposed virtues: but to the dorado or dolphin of the <i>moderns</i>, this character is far from being applicable, this fish being extremely voracious and destructive, and is known to follow the ships, and exhibit his sports and gambols, not from attachment to mankind, but from the more selfish motive of procuring food.... The circumstance which chiefly entitles the dorado to our attention is, the unrivalled and dazzling brilliancy of its colours in the water, the whole of its back ... appear[ing] as bespangled all over with jewels.... (1796; 1.9-10)<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#12">12</a></sup></blockquote>
<p>Stedman's alignment of the "real dolphin" with poetic sensibility offers a helpful clue concerning the way Oothoon would likely view the ostensibly less poetic dorado. Since Oothoon is "Open," in <i>Visions</i>, "to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears" (6:22), we can speculate that she would not debase this "dolphin of the moderns," as Stedman does when he attributes selfishness to it, but would find in its "unrivalled and dazzling" beauty a superlative source of joy and delight. Indeed, such an aesthetic would help to explain how poetic sensibility comes to anthropomorphize beautiful animals as "philanthropists"; for in contexts where non-human creatures inspire "joy and ... delight," they may be regarded quite logically as agents of human well-being. Unlike Oothoon, however, the empire-obsessed Bromion is driven to denounce and destroy "virgin joy" (6:11); and the "delights" he is capable of understanding are only those "of the merchant" (5:12). Because Bromion is a stranger to beauty and philanthropic impulse, his "modern" anthropomorphisms (to borrow Stedman's term) reflect the inevitable selfishness and paranoia of empire, so that even such beautiful creatures as dolphins become representatives of a <i>mis</i>anthropic "jealous[y]."</p>
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<p>As we have seen, however, not all of Oothoon's encounters with non-human creatures are positive ones. Since Oothoon has been colonized by Bromion in <i>Visions</i>' political allegory, and since, to a certain extent, colonialism proceeds via a pedagogical "colonizing of the mind,"<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#13">13</a></sup> we might expect Oothoon's worldview&#8212;including her discourse on non-human nature&#8212;to be adversely affected by her situation. Such influence, at any rate, would help to explain why Oothoon becomes obsessed with conceptual categories like "purity" and "defilement" in <i>Visions</i>, and why her own view of animals comes to reflect these categories (a reflection we have noted, for example, in her sadomasochistic view of predatory eagles as agents of her own purification). But Oothoon is no colonialist automaton, and she is by no means unaware that her physical enslavement has harmful ideological dimensions and ramifications. Thus she attacks her cultural conditioning on the most fundamental of levels.</p>
<blockquote>They told me that the night &amp; day were all that I could see;<br/>
They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.<br/>
And they inclos'd my infinite brain into a narrow circle.<br/>
And sunk my heart into the Abyss, a red round globe hot burning<br/>
Till all from life I was obliterated and erased.<br/>
(2:30-34)</blockquote>
<p>Here, in a nutshell, is Oothoon's critique of the epistemology of empire, the <i>empir</i>icism that attempts to consolidate an "empire of man" over all other creatures. Her reference to "night &amp; day" underscores the divisiveness of Western categorical thought, which conceptualizes existence according to binary oppositions (night/day, black/white, slave/master, defilement/purity, animal/human, etc.) and which can tolerate no liminal or "grey" areas. Hence, while Oothoon's reference to "five senses" has been read as a metaphysical indictment of "the body as prison of the soul" (Moss 14), the grammar of the passage suggests the validity of a more overtly political interpretation. Foregrounding the pedagogical aspect of colonialist discourse, Oothoon speaks of what "They told me . . . to inclose me up," thus gesturing toward a political intention, a methodical denial of other (non-empirical, non-European) modes of knowledge carried out <i>in order</i> to subjugate and imprison ("<i>to</i> inclose . . . up") enslaved peoples. Crucially, the final result of this process is a distinctively <i>narrative</i> denial, in which Oothoon's cultural "life" is "ob-literated and erased."</p>
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<p>For his own part, however, Bromion attempts to deny this violence by representing both his naturalist theory and colonialist praxis as modes of <i>visionary</i> endeavor:</p>
<blockquote>Then Bromion said: and shook the cavern with his lamentation<br/>
Thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit;<br/>
But knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth<br/>
To gratify senses unknown? trees beasts and birds unknown:<br/>
Unknown, not unpercievd, spread in the infinite microscope,<br/>
In places yet unvisited by the voyager. and in worlds<br/>
Over another kind of seas, and in atmospheres unknown . . . .<br/>
(4:12-18)</blockquote>
<p>By declaring that this lamentation "shook the cavern," Blake's narrator acknowledges Bromion's prophetic potential, raising the possibility that even this degenerate imperialist has the power to level the walls of the "caves" in which he and Oothoon have been "Bound back to back" since the second plate of the poem (2:5; see <a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/object.xq?objectid=vda.j.illbk.01&amp;java=yes">design to plate 1</a>), Bromion's reference to "senses unknown" reinforces the passage's visionary quality, implying as it does the epistemological necessity of sensory expansion or cleansing. Moreover, as Mark Bracher observes, Bromion's figurative gesture toward "another <i>kind</i> of seas" seems "on the verge of escaping the empiricist bias for the manifest and tangible" (173). These interesting possibilities are subtly belied, however, by Bromion's reference to "the infinite microscope," which underscores the empirical basis of his vision. As John Locke remarks in his <i>Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i> (1690), if one's visual perception were "1000, or 1000000 [times] more acute than it is now by the best Microscope," one "would be in a quite different World from other People: Nothing would appear the same . . . the visible <i>Ideas</i> of everything would be different" (qtd. in Raine 2.125). Engaging in this sort of Lockean speculation, Bromion's discourse of discovery&#8212;his optimistic belief in a revelatory correlation between "unknown" aspects of the human sensorium and "unknown" elements in the objective world&#8212;represents what Blake would likely have decried as an empirical co-optation of revelatory vision. Ultimately, Bromion's optimism is based on his confidence in Enlightenment progress, which, by perfecting the instruments and methods of empirical inquiry, would give humanity unprecedented access to things and places only currently beyond apprehension.</p>
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<p>More revealing, perhaps, than any other aspect of his speech on the knower and the known are Bromion's claims that "trees and fruits flourish upon the earth / To gratify senses unknown," and that such gratification brings the ultimate reward, "the joys of riches and ease" (4:14-15, 21). Here, we might pause to consider Blake's nearly contemporary poem <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>, wherein the prophet Ezekiel asks "is he honest who resists his genius or conscience. only for the sake of present <i>ease or gratification</i>?" (<i>MHH</i> 13; E39; emphasis added). The opposition Ezekiel establishes between "honest[y]" and "ease or gratification" in this rhetorical question is crucially important, especially if we bear in mind the distinctively Blakean claims that "Every honest man is a Prophet" (Anno. Watson E617) and that "the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God" (<i>MHH</i> 12; E38). Clearly, from a Blakean standpoint, Bromion's selfishness perverts or disqualifies the prophetic aspect of his utterance. A confirmed utilitarian, Bromion considers existence hedonistically, believing that one comes to know a thing by divining the many "senses unknown" in which it may be harnessed to the ends of an all-encompassing self-gratification. Embracing such an ideology, one responds to otherness, in short, by negating it in subsumption to the self.</p>
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<p>Bromion's instrumental evaluation of "trees beasts and birds unknown ... In places yet unvisited by the voyager" highlights the issue of European imperialist expansion, finding, once again, illuminating parallels in Stedman's <i>Narrative</i>. In one of his geographical descriptions, Stedman characterizes Dutch Guiana as a territory "enriched with a great variety of mineral substances," a land where "in general the soil is abundantly fruitful, the earth during the whole of the year [being] adorned with continual verdure, the trees loaded at the same time with blossoms and ripe fruit..." (1796; 1.34, 33). While such pastoral evocations tend to confirm the popular image of the New World as an Edenic garden, thus enticing European readers with the promise of unlimited prosperity in an idyllic New World landscape, they are ultimately qualified by Stedman's colonialist tendency to celebrate only geographical areas considered instrumentally valuable. Indeed, as far as Stedman is concerned, resource-based wealth and natural beauty go hand in hand. Hence, those areas that are "inhabited by Europeans, and cultivated with sugar, cocoa, cotton, and indigo plantations ... form the most delightful prospects that can be imagined" (1796; 1.36-37), while places unsuited for slave-based, plantation-style agriculture are implicitly praiseworthy only for the value of their exploitable timber and minerals. As for locations inaccessible to European navigation, they are quite simply "of little consequence to Europeans" (1796; 1.35)&#8212;or downright harmful to colonial interests (as in the case of heavily forested wilderness areas, which provided both real and potential sanctuary for escaped rebel slaves [1796; 1.3-4]). Like Blake's Bromion, Stedman implicitly values "newly discovered" lands only for their potential to increase the personal wealth, and to gratify the material desires, of their European masters.</p>
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<p>As a major contributing illustrator for Stedman's <i>Narrative</i>, Blake would likely have been struck not only by the work's manifold discussions of human slavery (which Blake's commentators have examined in detail) but also by its impressive pictorial and textual catalogues of "trees and fruits . . . beasts and birds unknown" (VDA 4:14-15). Like many contemporary writers of "exploration literature" and New World ethnography, Stedman takes care extensively to catalogue the plant, insect, and animal life he encounters in his travels; and more than half of <i>Narrative</i>'s eighty-one engraved illustrations deal with botanical and zoological subject matter (Blake himself having depicted, in at least four engravings, four species of monkey, a giant Aboma snake, some Limes, the Capsicum Mamee Apple, and various nuts). In its careful taxonomy of nature, Stedman's published text participates in the expansion of European naturalistic empire by extending knowledge of, and thus a certain mastery over, the terrains and topographies of the New World. Moreover, the text's intermixing of naturalist and ethnographic subject matter&#8212;highlighted most explicitly in Stedman's figurative description of the celebrated slave-girl Joanna as a "forsaken plant" (1796; 1.90)&#8212;draws an implicit parallel between the European objectification of plants and animals, on the one hand, and the objectification of human beings, on the other, each of which are valuable to the empire primarily in an instrumental capacity. It is hardly surprising, then, that Blake's Bromion, who wishes to subject all things to the taxonomizing scrutiny of his phallic "infinite microscope," ultimately finishes his lecture on the marvels of nature by celebrating "the joys of riches and ease" in a world that is monolithically governed by "one law for both the lion and the ox" (4:21-22).</p>
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<p>By examining parallels between human and environmental subjugation in <i>Visions</i>, I do not mean to efface crucial differences, nor do I wish to suggest that human slavery is a mere aspect of our treatment of nature (especially since colonialist discourses have often aligned non-European peoples with a "degenerate" nature in order morally to justify the subjugation of the former as an integral part of an ostensibly benevolent "civilizing mission"). However, because Oothoon herself fights for human liberty by deploying in the poem a series of arguments based on non-human exempla, <i>Visions</i>, I believe, demands a sustained focus on the relationship between colonialist and anti-colonialist treatments of humanity and nature. Consider, for example, the following passage, in which Oothoon attempts to combat Bromion's homogenizing imperialism by invoking the multiplicitous realm of animality:</p>
<blockquote>With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk?<br/>
With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse?<br/>
With what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse &amp; frog<br/>
Eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations.<br/>
And their pursuits, as different as their forms and as their joys:<br/>
Ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens: and the meek camel<br/>
Why he loves man: is it because of eye ear mouth or skin<br/>
Or breathing nostrils? No. for these the wolf and tyger have.<br/>
Ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave, and why her spires<br/>
Love to curl round the bones of death; and ask the rav'nous snake<br/>
Where she gets poison: &amp; the wing'd eagle why he loves the sun<br/>
And then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old.<br/>
(3:2-13)</blockquote>
<p>In this remarkable passage, Oothoon attempts to derive what Blake's friend Henry Fuseli referred to as animals' "allegoric Utility" (qtd. in Bentley 170). The logic informing her argument is as follows: If the heterogeneous behaviors and pursuits of non-human creatures cannot be entirely accounted for by way of reference to "eye ear mouth ... skin" and "breathing nostrils," then neither should human behavior be understood simply in terms of sensual responses to pre-given empirical data&#8212;especially if Oothoon is correct in her implicit claim that human actions, like the human brain, are potentially "infinite" (2:32) in scope. But while Oothoon exploits the "allegoric utility" of animals to support her arguments for human emancipation, she does not do so in an arrogantly anthropocentric way. Indeed, according to the rhetorical structure of her argument, an open-minded inquiry into the nature of non-human being provides a prerequisite basis for <i>human</i> self-reflection: first we are to consider the otherness and difference of animals, "And <i>then</i>," Oothoon declares, we may "tell [her] the thoughts of man." At the very least, she suggests, "man" must be understood <i>contextually</i>, not as an abstract, conceptually pure category of being.</p>
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<p>Kathleen Raine has argued convincingly that Oothoon's discourse on animals and sensory perception owes an intertextual debt to Emanuel Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#14">14</a></sup> which posits a correlation between an entity's "Internal" makeup and the actions it undertakes in the "External" world. Here is an excerpt from Swedenborg's summary of the matter:</p>
<blockquote>[T]here is in every Thing an Internal and an External, and . . . the External dependeth on the Internal, as the Body does on its Soul . . . . For the Illustration of this Truth it may suffice to consider a few Particulars respecting a Silkworm, [and] a Bee . . . . The Internal of the Silkworm is that, by Virtue whereof its External is impelled to spin its silken Web, and afterwards to assume Wings like a Butterfly and fly abroad. The Internal of a Bee is that, by Virtue whereof its External is impelled to suck Honey out of Flowers, and to construct waxen Cells after a wonderful Form . . . . (Swedenborg 2.417)</blockquote>
<p>By arguing that every creature's "External dependeth on the Internal," Swedenborg, like Oothoon, grants priority to an intrinsic rather than extrinsic makeup of being,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#15">15</a></sup> implying possibilities of perception that Bromion's empiricist doctrine of the "five senses" refuses to sanction. Accordingly, individuals are centers of dynamic activity, not mere, passive receptors of externally imposed sensations. But where Swedenborg uses a vaguely deterministic vocabulary to speak of creaturely activity (stating that bees and silkworms are "impelled" to behave in certain ways), Blake's Oothoon chooses to speak of such activity in terms of multiplicitous "joys" and "loves" (3:6, 8, 11-12), terms carrying connotations of freedom rather than coercion or enslavement. By attributing the delights of joy and love to non-human creatures, Oothoon not only avoids the determinism implicit in Swedenborg's notion of creaturely impulsion; she also problematizes the influential Cartesian hypothesis that animals are soulless automata, ultimately incapable of experiencing either pleasure or pain. Moreover, by relentlessly particularizing animals&#8212;by emphasizing that "their habitations" and "pursuits" are "as different as their forms and as their joys" (3:5-6)&#8212;Oothoon's counter-discourse strives to deconstruct the homogenizing concept of animality itself, thus challenging Bromion's philosophical claim that there can be "one law for both the lion and the ox" (4:22). Rigorously undertaken, such a deconstruction would have the most profound social and environmental implications; for, as Jacques Derrida observes, the concept of animality presupposes the drawing of an oppositional limit which "<i>itself</i> blurs the differences, the diff&#233;rance and the differences, not only between man and animal, but among animal societies, and, within the animal societies and within human society itself, so many differences" (183).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#16">16</a></sup> In <i>Visions</i>, Blake's Oothoon combats the all-encompassing violence of colonialism via a conceptual multiplication of difference in its manifold cultural <i>and</i> ecological manifestations. She aims, in short, to convince her listeners to respect and celebrate what renowned biologist E. O. Wilson calls "the diversity of life" (passim).</p>
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<p>As if to combat the violent rapacity of Bromion's monolithic imperialism, Oothoon deploys a sexual metaphor to represent her experience of life in the multiplicitous world she envisions. She is, she declares,</p>
<blockquote>Open to joy and to delight where ever beauty appears<br/>
If in the morning sun I find it: there my eyes are fix'd<br/>
In happy copulation; if in evening mild, wearied with work;<br/>
Sit on a bank and draw the pleasures of this free born joy.<br/>
(6:22-7:2)</blockquote>
<p>Oothoon's "openness" and her use of the term "copulation" to characterize her encounter with beauty recall early modern concepts of the eye as a sexual organ, a kind of optic vagina through which the mind was thought to be "impregnated" by visual stimuli.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#17">17</a></sup> In Blake's poetics, however, these figures of openness and copulation also carry spiritual connotations, since they anticipate <i>Jerusalem</i>'s highly privileged and implicitly sexualized concept of Eternal emanational encounter, wherein discrete and integral individuals meet in a process of "mutual interchange," "comingl[ing]" ecstatically "from the Head even to the Feet" (see <i>J</i> 88:3-11, E246; 69:43, E223). Such profound interchange is implicit in Oothoon's rhetorical synaesthesia. By figuring her visual perception of beauty in terms of copulative touch, Oothoon articulates an imaginative alternative to the oppositional subject/object dynamic so often associated with the economy of the gaze. When perceptual vision is understood as a mode of touch, the distance separating perceiver and perceived is conceptually minimized, imaginatively bringing subjects and objects into the most proximate, mutually affective relationality. What is more, Oothoon's metaphor of visual or visionary copulation mitigates against the dualism of an Enlightenment philosophy that represents mentality rather than biology as "characteristic of the human and . . . what is 'fully and authentically' human" (Plumwood 169); for, by conceptualizing aesthetic apprehension in terms of sexual communion, her metaphor strives imaginatively to bring human biological and mental aspects into a kind of reconciliatory unison.</p>
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<p>And yet, Oothoon's subsequent cry, "Love! Love! Love! happy happy Love! free as the mountain wind!" (7:16), encodes in its repetitions and multiple exclamation points a degree of hyperbolical protestation that, rather than conveying prophetic confidence in her vision of unbridled consummation with otherness, suggests trauma and hysteria. It is difficult, in other words, not to see Oothoon's overly emphatic cry as the compensatory reaction of a brutalized, insulted, and enslaved being trying desperately to regain the optimism of an earlier innocence. Such a state of affairs would, at any rate, help to account for the disconcertingly problematic scenario Oothoon imagines as a viable alternative to Theotormon's "hypocrite modesty," the "self-love that envies all" (6:16; 7:21):</p>
<blockquote>But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,<br/>
And catch for thee girls of mild silver, or of furious gold;<br/>
I'll lie beside thee on a bank &amp; view their wanton play<br/>
In lovely copulation bliss on bliss with Theotormon:<br/>
Red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first born beam,<br/>
Oothoon shall view his dear delight, nor e'er with jealous cloud<br/>
Come in the heaven of generous love; nor selfish blightings bring.<br/>
(7:23-29)</blockquote>
<p>While this passage is syntactically ambivalent and therefore difficult to interpret with precision,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#18">18</a></sup> it nevertheless seems very much at odds with the emancipatory politics Oothoon articulates earlier in the poem. As Leopold Damrosch, Jr., observes (198), Oothoon's "silken nets and traps of adamant" troublingly recall the religious "nets &amp; gins &amp; traps" (5:18) she so emphatically denounces earlier in the poem, mechanisms used "to catch virgin joy, / And brand it with the name of whore" (6:11-12). Furthermore, the narcissistic aspect of her fantasy not only servilely defers or denies the gratification of her <i>own</i> sexual desire; by foregoing her own participatory touch in the encounter, Oothoon's narcissism also contradicts her earlier synaesthetic ideal of visual-tactile copulation. Far from liberating herself from the tyranny of systemic sexual oppression, Oothoon seems unwittingly willing to perpetuate it and, as procuress, to extend it (and the stereotype of harlotry) to other innocent "girls,"<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#19">19</a></sup> whose associations with "silver" and "gold" suggest something of their commodification in Oothoon's sexual fantasy.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In the subsequent lines of the poem, however, Oothoon invokes precious metals in order forcefully to indict, and to remark the dire consequences of, a cultural milieu that reduces all things&#8212;whether human or otherwise&#8212;to the instrumental status of commodity; and it is here that the revolutionary tones of her earlier environmental and sociopolitical critique begin to reassert themselves.</p>
<blockquote>Does the sun walk in glorious raiment. on the secret floor<br/>
Where the cold miser spreads his gold? or does the bright cloud drop<br/>
On his stone threshold? does his eye behold the beam that brings<br/>
Expansion to the eye of pity? or will he bind himself<br/>
Beside the ox to thy hard furrow? does that mild beam blot<br/>
The bat, the owl, the glowing tyger, and the king of night.<br/>
(7:30-8:5)</blockquote>
<p>Oothoon's miser is, residually, an alchemist: though his "cold[ness]" suggests that he has lost all sense of alchemical creative wonder, he nevertheless wishes to convert all things to gold. Insofar as the pursuit of this homogeneous substance provides the binding "one law" of his existence, he resembles the Urizenic Bromion; but to the extent that his fetishistic hoarding of gold necessitates a renunciation of all self-expenditure and a paranoid withdrawal from society (which must be seen as a source of expense or potential thievery), he resembles the withdrawn and virtue-hoarding Theotormon (who, like the miser, is also associated with a "threshold" of stone [2:6]). One would hardly expect such antisocial behavior in an era of so-called enlightenment, whose "mild beam" promises humanistically to bring "Expansion to the eye of pity."<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/hutchings/hutchings.html#20">20</a></sup> But, as the sun's "glorious raiment" is replaced by the merely reflective light of a "bright cloud," the "mild beam" of human sympathy gives way before the questionable lustre of the miser's gold (which signifies, in <i>Visions</i>' imperialist context, the stolen wealth comprising the so-called commonwealth). Under such conditions, humanity's "mild beam" is darkened to opacity, becoming that biblical mote of motes, the obstructing "beam" in the eye of self-righteous and hypocritical avarice (Matt. 7.3-5).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Writing on the relationship between enlightenment and imperialism in his 1796 treatise <i>Illustrations of Prophecy</i>, Joseph Lomas Towers posed a question that can help us to appreciate the urgency of this ethical dilemma: "Are we not apprized," he asked, "that the guilt of nations, as well as of individuals, is enhanced in proportion to the degree of light and knowledge which heaven has vouchsafed them?" (1.xv). Living in an era of unprecedented "light and knowledge," but failing to behold "the beam that brings / Expansion to the eye of pity," Oothoon's miser becomes a figure for the culpability of an empire whose practices of cultural exploitation and slavery are decidedly at odds with its professed morality. Not only does the miser's unenlightened avarice disable sympathetic identification with other humans; his ironically named "mild beam" also disables any sympathetic concern for the natural environment and its non-human inhabitants, "blot[ting]," as it does, "The bat, the owl, the glowing tyger, and the king of night." According to Oothoon, for whom "every thing that lives is holy" (8:10), even these ominously nocturnal creatures&#8212;indeed, even the symbolically decried "wild snake," whose presence in the Garden augured the loss of Judeo-Christian paradise (8:7)&#8212;are worthy of respect.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Unfortunately, Oothoon's revolutionary vision is easily co-opted. After all, has not Bromion's empirical science, in surveying its proper domain, already laid claim to the objective universe? And does not this science plan to subject "every thing that lives" to the authority of its scrutinizing gaze? Moreover, has not Theotormon's institutionalized religion long denied the holiness of nature in order to claim exclusive, God-given right to define the nature of "holiness"? Indeed, in asserting the holiness of <i>every</i> living thing, Oothoon articulates a pluralism that has no recourse to exclusionary tactics, no effective strategy for separating the goats of tyranny from the lambs of righteousness. Hence, by Oothoon's own standards, even Bromion and Theotormon are holy and, therefore, worthy of respect. While Oothoon's philosophy is thus generously free of <i>ressentiment</i>, it runs the risk of political self-sabotage, for to respect representatives of tyranny is to remain potentially subject to their authority. Such a state of affairs might, perhaps, account for the rather grim scenario Blake depicts in <i>Visions</i>' concluding lines:</p>
<blockquote>Thus every morning wails Oothoon. but Theotormon sits<br/>
Upon the margind ocean conversing with shadows dire.<br/>
The Daughters of Albion hear her woes, &amp; eccho back her sighs.<br/>
(8:11-13)</blockquote>
<p>Ending with its all-too-familiar refrain of echoed sighs (cf. 2:20, 5:2), <i>Visions</i> seems ultimately to have resolved nothing. Hence, the tendency of some readers to regard Oothoon as a "failed prophet" (Anderson passim). One must note, however, that Oothoon utters at the poem's conclusion more than just despairingly impotent sighs. She also emphatically "wails"&#8212;obtrusively expressing the profundity of her sorrow and dissatisfaction&#8212;each and "every morning" (8:11), demonstrating in the process her unflagging "determination to awaken those around her" (Linkin 192). Alongside her inability to achieve timely emancipation for herself and the Daughters, Oothoon's failure to convert or reform her oppressors in fact <i>typifies</i> the prophetic condition. To quote Robert Gray's contemporary discussion of biblical prophecy, "the prophets evinced the integrity of their characters, by zealously encountering oppression, hatred, and death.... Then it was, that they firmly supported trial of cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were . . . destitute, afflicted, tormented" (qtd. in Towers 2.325). Refusing a premature and facile apocalypticism, <i>Visions</i> soberly acknowledges the complex difficulties attending its social and environmental crises. Ending the poem without resolution, in other words, Blake places ultimate responsibility for political transformation upon his readers, forcing us not only to confront Oothoon's woes but to dwell upon them, hoping, it seems, that we will do more than merely "eccho back her sighs."</p>
</li>
</ol>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Anderson, Mark A. "Oothoon, Failed Prophet." <i>Romanticism Past and Present</i> 8.2 (1984): 1-21.</p>
<p class="hang">Bacon, Francis. <i>Novum Organum</i>. <i>The Works of Francis Bacon.</i> Vol. 4. Ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath. London: Longman, 1860. 37-248.</p>
<p class="hang">Baine, "Rodney M. Bromion's 'Jealous Dolphins'". <i>Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly</i> 14.4 (1981): 206-207.</p>
<p class="hang">Bentley, G. E., Jr. <i>Blake Records</i>. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1969.</p>
<p class="hang">Bewell, Alan. "'Jacobin Plants': Botany as Social Theory in the 1790s." <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i> 20.3 (1989): 132-39.</p>
<p class="hang">Bhabha, Homi K. <i>The Location of Culture</i>. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Blake, William. <i>The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake</i>. Ed. David V. Erdman. Newly Revised ed. New York and London: Doubleday, 1988.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," copy J, plates i, iii, 2, 3. <i>The William Blake Archive</i>. Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. 9 May 2000. &lt; http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake/ &gt;.</p>
<p class="hang">Bracher, Mark. "The Metaphysical Grounds of Oppression in Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>." <i>Colby Library Quarterly</i> 20.3 (1984): 164-176.</p>
<p class="hang">Clark, David L. "On Being 'The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany': Dwelling with Animals after Levinas." <i>Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History</i>. Ed. Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior. New York and London: Routledge, 1997. 165-98.</p>
<p class="hang">Damrosch, Leopold, Jr. <i>Symbol and Truth in Blake's Myth</i>. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.</p>
<p class="hang">Darwin, Erasmus. <i>The Botanic Garden</i>. 1791. Menston, Yorkshire, and London: The Scolar P, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Derrida, Jacques. "On Reading Heidegger: An Outline of Remarks to the Essex Colloquium." <i>Research in Phenomenology</i> 17 (1987): 171-85.</p>
<p class="hang">Descartes, Ren&#233;. <i>Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences.</i> 1637. <i>The Philosophical Works of Descartes</i>. Vol. 1. Ed. and trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross. New York: Dover, 1955. 81-130.</p>
<p class="hang">Erdman, David V. <i>Blake, Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of the History of His Own Times</i>. 1954. Revised ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Illuminated Blake: William Blake's Complete Illuminated Works with a Plate-by-Plate Commentary</i>. New York: Dover, 1974.</p>
<p class="hang">Gillham, D. G. <i>William Blake</i>. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Glanville, Joseph. <i>Plus Ultra; or, the Progress and Advancement of Knowledge Since the Days of Aristotle</i>. London: James Collins, 1668.</p>
<p class="hang">Goslee, Nancy Moore. "Slavery and Sexual Character: Questioning the Master Trope in Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>." <i>ELH</i> 57.1 (1990): 101-128.</p>
<p class="hang">Griffin, Susan. "Ecofeminism and Meaning." <i>Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature</i>. Ed. Karen J. Warren. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1997. 213-226.</p>
<p class="hang">Haigwood, Laura. "Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>: Revising an Interpretive Tradition." <i>William Blake</i>. Ed. David Punter. London: MacMillan, 1996. 94-107.</p>
<p class="hang">Heffernan, James A. W. "Blake's Oothoon: The Dilemmas of Marginality." <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 30.1 (1991): 3-18.</p>
<p class="hang">Hoerner, Fred. "Prolific Reflections: Blake's Contortion of Surveillance in <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>." <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 35.1 (1996): 119-150.</p>
<p class="hang">Howard, John. <i>Infernal Poetics: Poetic Structures in Blake's Lambeth Prophecies</i>. Cranbury, NJ: Associated UPs, 1984.</p>
<p class="hang">Lenz, Joseph. "'Base Trade': Theatre as Prostitution." <i>ELH</i> 60.4 (1993): 833-855.</p>
<p class="hang">Linkin, Harriet Kramer. "Revisioning Blake's Oothoon." <i>Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly</i> 23.4 (1990): 184-194.</p>
<p class="hang">Marx, Leo. <i>The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America</i>. 1964. rpt. New York: Oxford UP, 1967.</p>
<p class="hang">Merchant, Carolyn. <i>The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution</i>. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980.</p>
<p class="hang">Moss, John G. "Structural Form in Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>." <i>The Humanities Association Bulletin</i> 22.2 (1971): 9-18.</p>
<p class="hang">Plumwood, Val. "Nature, Self, and Gender: Feminism, Environmental Philosophy, and the Critique of Rationalism." <i>Ecological Feminist Philosophies</i>. Ed. Karen J. Warren. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1996. 155-180.</p>
<p class="hang">Punter, David. "Blake, Trauma and the Female." <i>New Literary History</i> 15.3 (1984): 475-490.</p>
<p class="hang">Raine, Kathleen. <i>Blake and Tradition</i>. 2 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.</p>
<p class="hang">Soyinka, Wole. <i>Myth, Literature and the African World</i>. 1976. rpt. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">Stedman, John Gabriel. <i>Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, Transcribed for the First Time from the 1790 Manuscript</i>. Eds. Richard Price and Sally Price. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1988.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition, Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America; from the Year 1772, to 1777</i>. 2 vols. London: Joseph Johnson and J. Edwards, 1796.</p>
<p class="hang">Swedenborg, Emanuel. <i>True Christian Religion; Containing the Universal Theology of the New Church</i>. 2 vols. London, 1781.</p>
<p class="hang">Thiong'o, Ngugi wa. <i>Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature</i>. London: James Currey, 1986.</p>
<p class="hang">Towers, Joseph Lomas. <i>Illustrations of Prophecy: In the Course of which are Elucidated Many Predictions</i>. 2 vols. London: 1796.</p>
<p class="hang">Vine, Steven. "'That Mild Beam': Enlightenment and Enslavement in William Blake's <i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>." <i>The Discourse of Slavery: Aphra Behn to Toni Morrison</i>. Ed. Carl Plasa and Betty J. Ring. London and New York: Routledge, 1994. 40-63.</p>
<p class="hang">Vogler, Thomas A. "Intertextual Signifiers and the Blake of That Already." <i>Romanticism Past and Present</i> 9.1 (1985): 1-33.</p>
<p class="hang">Wilkie, Brian. <i>Blake's Thel and Oothoon</i>. Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, ELS Monograph Series, vol. 48, 1990.</p>
<p class="hang">Wilson, Edward O. <i>The Diversity of Life</i>. New York and London: Norton, 1992.</p>
<p class="hang">Worster, Donald. <i>Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas</i>. Second ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.</p>
</div>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="indent"><a name="*"> </a>*&#160;&#160; An earlier version of this paper was presented in April, 2000, at the annual meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association (Buffalo, New York). I am grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous financial support received during the researching and writing of this essay.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="1"> </a>1&#160;&#160;See, for example, Nancy Moore Goslee, "Slavery and Sexual Character," page 108; David Punter, "Blake, Trauma and the Female," pages 483-484; Brian Wilkie, <i>Blake's Thel and Oothoon</i>, page 65; Mark Bracher, "Metaphysical Grounds of Oppression," page 167; and Laura Haigwood, "Blake's Visions," page 99.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="2"> </a>2&#160;&#160;For additional comments concerning the human right of "dominion" or "empire" over nature, Francis Bacon's <i>Novum Organum</i> (114) and Ren&#233; Descartes' <i>Discourse on Method</i> (119). See also Donald Worster's <i>Nature's Economy</i>, Chapter Two.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="3"> </a>3&#160;&#160; All references to Blake's writing are to David V. Erdman's edition of <i>The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake</i>. In my parenthetical citations I refer first to plate and line numbers (for example, 1:20-21) and second, where appropriate, to the page number where the citation occurs in the Erdman edition (for example, E46). In my citations I also make use of the following abbreviations, where necessary, to signify individual works: MHH (<i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>); VDA (<i>Visions of the Daughters of Albion</i>); FZ (<i>The Four Zoas</i>); J (<i>Jerusalem</i>); Anno. (<i>Annotations</i>). All references to Blake's poetic designs for <i>Visions</i> are to Copy J, reproduced both in Erdman's <i>Illuminated Blake</i> and on-line in <i>The William Blake Archive</i>. My plate numbering follows the order established by Erdman.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="4"> </a>4&#160;&#160; Here Marx quotes Captain Arthur Barlowe, who uses the "abundant garden" image to describe his first impression of Virginia in 1754. Marx points out that the "ecological image" of America as a bountiful garden was accompanied historically by the less romantic image, embraced by New England's Puritan settlers, of America as a "hideous wilderness" that needed to be conquered and tamed (42-43).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="5"> </a>5&#160;&#160;See, for example, Erdman, <i>Prophet</i>, page 239; John Howard, <i>Infernal Poetics</i>, pages 97 and 102; and Steven Vine, "That Mild Beam," page 58.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="6"> </a>6&#160;&#160;As early as 1721, one of the possible significations of "rape" was "To rob, strip, plunder (a place)" (<i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="7"> </a>7&#160;&#160;For an astute discussion of the sexual politics informing Enlightenment science's effort to assert an all-encompassing human dominion over nature, see Carolyn Merchant, <i>The Death of Nature</i>, Chapter 7.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="8"> </a>8&#160;&#160;For a relevant discussion of the relationship between botany and sexual morality in the 1790s, see Alan Bewell's "Jacobin Plants," especially pages 133-134. See also Erasmus Darwin's "Loves of the Plants" (in <i>The Botanic Garden</i>), which represents a number of plant species as "harlots" (e.g., 1.133, 3.259-264).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="9"> </a>9&#160;&#160;In this essay I discuss both the unpublished version and the extensively revised published version of Stedman's <i>Narrative</i>. I differentiate these versions herein by indicating the following dates in my parenthetical citations: 1790 for the unpublished manuscript and 1796 for the final, published text.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="10"> </a>10&#160;&#160;Among the names mentioned in the subscription list for Stedman's published text is "BLAKE (Mr. Wm.) London."<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="11"> </a>11&#160;&#160; The marked opposition between the fiercely appetitive Bromion and the obsessively ascetic Theotormon suggests the pertinence of D. G. Gillham's thesis that these characters represent "two aspects of a single divided being" (195).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="12"> </a>12&#160;&#160; In the 1790 manuscript, Stedman does not differentiate the dolphin from the dorado. Rather, he represents these creatures as members of a single dolphin species, a species subject to divergent ancient and modern evaluations only because of historical changes in human perspective and sensibility (1790; 31-32).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="13"> </a>13&#160;&#160; I adapt this phrase from the Kenyan revolutionary author Ngugi wa Thiong'o, who argues at length that the cultural emancipation of African peoples must proceed in part via a pedagogical "decolonization" of the mind. See <i>Decolonising the Mind</i>, especially pages 28-29. See also Wole Soyinka's <i>Myth, Literature and the African World</i>, page viii.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="14"> </a>14&#160;&#160; See Raine, <i>Blake and Tradition</i>, Volume 2, pages 127 to 128.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="15"> </a>15&#160;&#160; On the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic models of being in <i>Visions</i>, see Mark Bracher's "The Metaphysical Grounds of Oppression," especially page 169.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="16"> </a>16&#160;&#160; For Derrida's discussion of animality, I am indebted to David L. Clark, "On Being 'The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany': Dwelling with Animals after Levinas," pages 172-173.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="17"> </a>17&#160;&#160; See Joseph Lenz, "Base Trade," page 841. As Lenz points out, Roger Bacon and Vesalius (in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, respectively), composed drawings of the eye that resembled contemporary drawings of female reproductive organs.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="18"> </a>18&#160;&#160; On the passage's syntactical ambiguity, see Harriet Kramer Linkin, "Revisioning Blake's Oothoon," page 190. For a convincing discussion of the problems attending a "fixed" interpretation of this passage, see Fred Hoerner, "Prolific Reflections," pages 147-149. And, for the possibility that Oothoon speaks of copulation figuratively rather than literally, see James A. W. Heffernan, "Blake's Oothoon," page 11.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="19"> </a>19&#160;&#160; See Laura Haigwood, "Blake's Visions," page 104.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="20"> </a>20&#160;&#160; I am indebted here to Steven Vine's suggestion that the figure of the "mild beam" signifies the "ambiguous power of enlightenment." See Vine, "That Mild Beam," page 60.</p>
</div>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/hutchings-kevin">Hutchings, Kevin</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/william-blake" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Blake</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1284" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Visions of the Daughters of Albion</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/tags/gender" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gender</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1243" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">environment</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1285" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">imperialism</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1286" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">colonialism</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/kevin-hutchings-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kevin Hutchings</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/john-gabriel-stedman-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">John Gabriel Stedman</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-provinceorstate-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">ProvinceOrState:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/province-or-state/british-columbia" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">British Columbia</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-continent-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Continent:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/continent/america" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">America</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/continent/europe" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Europe</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:05:37 +0000rc-admin22486 at http://www.rc.umd.eduWordsworth's "The Haunted Tree" and the Sexual Politics of Landscapehttp://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/ecology/index.html">Romanticism and Ecology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h2 style="text-align: center"><a name="top" id="top"> </a>Romanticism &amp; Ecology</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">Wordsworth's "The Haunted Tree" and the Sexual Politics of Landscape</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center">Tim Fulford, Nottingham Trent University</h4>
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<p>In 1819 Wordsworth began to write a short poem that he published in 1820. He called it "The Haunted Tree." Unusual within his corpus in that it is fancifully mythological and playfully erotic, this poem is nevertheless an evocation of a particular oak-tree in the familiar landscape of Rydal Park, Grasmere.<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#1"><sup>1</sup></a> Wordsworth dwells upon the tree in a manner that links the poem to "The Thorn" and to the poems on the naming of places. The poem is part of a kind of arboreal sub-genre within Wordsworth's nature verse and continues the modification of the eighteenth-century Georgic he had previously made in "Yew-Trees" and <i>The Excursion</i>.</p>
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<p>Here is the text of the poem:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Those silver clouds collected round the sun<br/>
His mid-day warmth abate not, seeming less<br/>
To overshade than multiply his beams<br/>
By soft reflection&#8212;grateful to the sky,<br/>
To rocks, fields, woods. Nor doth our human sense<br/>
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy<br/>
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak<br/>
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired<br/>
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords<br/>
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use<br/>
Was fashioned; whether by the hand of Art,<br/>
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought<br/>
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs<br/>
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose<br/>
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.<br/>
O Lady! fairer in thy Poet's sight<br/>
Than fairest spiritual creature of the groves,<br/>
Approach;&#8212;and, thus invited, crown with rest<br/>
The noon-tide hour: though truly some there are<br/>
Whose footsteps superstitiously avoid<br/>
This venerable Tree; for, when the wind<br/>
Blows keenly, it sends forth a creaking sound<br/>
(Above the general roar of woods and crags)<br/>
Distinctly heard from far&#8212;a doleful note!<br/>
As if (so Grecian shepherds would have deemed)<br/>
The Hamadryad, pent within, bewailed<br/>
Some bitter wrong. Nor it is unbelieved,<br/>
By ruder fancy, that a troubled ghost<br/>
Haunts the old trunk; lamenting deeds of which<br/>
The flowery ground is conscious. But no wind<br/>
Sweeps now along this elevated ridge;<br/>
Not even a zephyr stirs;&#8212;the obnoxious Tree<br/>
Is mute; and, in his silence, would look down,<br/>
O lovely Wanderer of the trackless hills,<br/>
On thy reclining form with more delight<br/>
Than his coevals in the sheltered vale<br/>
Seem to participate, the while they view<br/>
Their own far-stretching arms and leafy heads<br/>
Vividly pictured in some glassy pool,<br/>
That, for a brief space, checks the hurrying stream!<br/>
(Wordsworth 291)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That "The Haunted Tree" has been unjustly neglected by critics is surprising, since it alludes to a number of poems that have been regarded as icons of high Romanticism&#8212;poems by Coleridge as well as by Wordsworth himself. It continues the debate about nature, the feminine, love and inspiration begun in "Dejection" and the "Immortality" ode. And it introduces into that debate quiet topical reference to some of the most fundamental social issues and fashionable literary trends of Regency Britain. In this essay I shall try to rectify critical neglect of the poem by examining it in detail, arguing that we need to read it&#8212;like much of Wordsworth's later poetry&#8212;as an intelligent and witty, if oblique, contribution to contemporary political and social debate, a contribution more and not less pertinent in its choice of a mythologized English nature as its setting.</p>
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<p>In the nineteen eighties, a number of critics suggested that Wordsworth's nature poetry is a flight from political issues into the sublime area of his own subjectivity&#8212;that it reveals a loss of faith in political and social argument. For Marjorie Levinson it is an "evasion," for Alan Liu a "denial," of history.<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#2"><sup>2</sup></a> The concept of "displacement"&#8212;originally Raymond Williams's but revived by David Simpson&#8212;is more subtle but still, I shall argue, not wholly adequate as a formulation of Wordsworth's poetic relationship with the political and social issues of the early nineteenth century since it presumes that landscape functions as a secondary stage on which issues that arose elsewhere can be depicted in controlled form (Simpson 15-20).</p>
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<p>Answering these charges that Wordsworthian nature was an "evasion" or "denial" of history, Jonathan Bate argued that the depiction of nature in <i>The Prelude</i> amounted to a "green politics" and a Romantic ecology of particular relevance at the present historical moment of advanced despoliation of the earth's most vital elements. Bate's intervention reminded us that nature was&#8212;and is&#8212;political. But as an answer to Levinson, Liu and Simpson, and even as a reading of Wordsworth per se, it was itself open to accusations of nostalgia and pastoralism, for it placed the Romantics at the start of a tradition of nature conservancy in Britain that many see as class-bound and politically conservative&#8212;a survival of the values of the country gentry and aristocracy by means of the institutionalized National Trust. Since the publication of Bate's <i>Romantic Ecology</i>, however, a number of scholars have presented a more historically detailed version of Wordsworth's involvement with and influence upon "green" politics, natural science and environmental movements (1-35). Michael Wiley has reconstructed the complex ways in which natural space was understood by early nineteenth-century geographers. He has suggested that Wordsworth's poetic organization of the prospect-view was shaped by surveyors who began to map the Lake District. Robin Jarvis, meanwhile, has restored to view the varied cultural and political significances of rural walking in the period. I myself have examined the ways in which nature-description advanced views about class and gender, and was understood to do so, as has Jacqueline Labbe (Fulford, "Landscape," and "Romanticism"). Most helpfully, the work of geographers Stephen Daniels and Charles Watkins has correlated the aesthetics of the picturesque with the practical management of nature on estate-farms. As a result, the landscape of Romantic-period Britain, and the views presented of that landscape, are better understood than before. What&#8212;if anything&#8212;it meant to be "green" in Wordsworth's Britain is a question we are now much better placed to answer.</p>
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<p>"The Haunted Tree" contains a vision of men and women living in harmony in an unspoilt nature. It is, to all appearances, a "green" poem, in Bate's sense, because it discovers social community in a landscape of peace. The ground is not raped, the soil not exploited&#8212;and neither are the people who live close to it. And this balance between humans and the natural environment that they have nurtured is explicitly opposed to other, exploitative, kinds of relationship both within human society and between humans and nature.</p>
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<p>But Wordsworth's "green politics" were not, pac&#233; Bate, to do with equality, liberty or commonwealth. Not by 1819, anyway. "The Haunted Tree" may endorse an ecological balance, but it conceives that balance in terms of traditionalist and hierarchical eighteenth-century models&#8212;models that presume the continuing social and political inferiority of rural laborers and of women. Wordsworth's "green" England is a conservative and unequal place, a place in which order and continuity come before liberty and change. It is a place in which Edmund Burke's thought is deeply rooted.</p>
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<p>In Wordsworth's Britain ownership of land was still a fundamental political issue: the gentry's and nobility's possession of it was used to justify their domination of parliament, whilst laborers" (and women's) lack of it was used to explain their poverty and disenfranchizement. The politics of landscape, in other words, were parliamentary politics too. They were also sexual politics: for Burkeian traditionalists it was the duty of those given authority by landownership to shelter vulnerable women. "The Haunted Tree" updates the (sexual) politics of landscape found in Burke and in the eighteenth-century tradition in which political arguments were advanced by use of nature imagery&#8212;in particular by the iconographical use of trees. At the same time it intervenes in the debate (stimulated by Burke) about gender and sexual roles that reached fever pitch in 1819-20. That debate was fuelled by Byron's Orientalist poetry, in particular the newly published <i>Don Juan</i>, and by the attack upon him made by Wordsworth's friend the Poet Laureate Southey. The debate was accompanied by a political crisis, with revolution widely expected, when George IV caused Lord Liverpool's administration to have his wife, Caroline, "tried" before the House of Lords in an attempt to show that she was unfit, on the grounds of her sexual immorality, to become Queen.</p>
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<p>I begin by examining the use made of landscape-imagery in political argument. Both radical opponents and conservative defenders of Britain's unreformed constitution employed nature-imagery to render their arguments appealing. Trees figured prominently in that imagery after John Locke had used the oak to illustrate organic unity.<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#3"><sup>3</sup></a> Oaks' longevity, rootedness and strength made them suitable emblems for writers who portrayed an ancient constitution secured in the heritable property of land and capable of gradual change as a growth of English soil.<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#4"><sup>4</sup></a> Edmund Burke depicted Britain's form of government as tree-like, of ancient growth: it "moves on through the varied tenour of perpetual decay, fall, renovation and progression" in "the method of nature" ("Reflections" 120). The people were "great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak" (181). Burke was opposed by Thomas Paine and other radicals who employed the political iconography of the French Revolution, in which the Liberty tree was an emblem of the new growth possible once ancient injustices had been uprooted. Like an oak Burke's constitution was rooted in the land, time honored, slow to change and grow, protective of the subjects who sheltered beneath it. Wordsworth characterized Burke himself as a tree, acknowledging the power of his symbolic oak as an anti-revolutionary naturalization of conservative politics:</p>
<blockquote>I see him,&#8212;old, but vigorous in age,<br/>
Stand like an oak whose stag-horn branches start<br/>
Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe<br/>
The younger brethren of the grove . . .<br/>
While he forewarns, denounces, launches forth,<br/>
Against all systems built on abstract rights,<br/>
Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims<br/>
Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time;<br/>
Declares the vital power of social ties<br/>
Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain,<br/>
Exploding upstart Theory, insists<br/>
Upon the allegiance to which men are born.<br/><i>(The Prelude</i>, VII.519-30)</blockquote>
<p>Wordsworth wrote this tribute when a political supporter of his patron, the Tory landowner and political magnate Lord Lowther.</p>
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<p>Landowners and conservative moralists exploited the political symbolism of trees in an attempt to show liberty to be more truly rooted in the British constitution than in the French Revolution. Uvedale Price, the Whig squire and theorist of the picturesque, put such ideas into practice. He designed his estate at Foxley as a display of paternalism. Cottagers were not cleared from his park but included within it, their rustic dwellings sheltered by the oak and ash woods which Price spent much of his time and income maintaining and planting. His tenants were visibly under his protection in a symbolic ordering of the real landscape which emphasized that order and liberty depended upon the mutual duties owed by rich and poor. Wordsworth corresponded with Price and visited Foxley, without entirely approving of the landscape park (William and Dorothy Wordsworth I: 506).</p>
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<p>Price's fellow theorist Richard Payne Knight, also a Herefordshire Whig squire, both planted oaks and poeticized about their political significance. He portrayed the oak tree as a symbol of a constitutional British monarch paternally sheltering lesser trees grouped around it: "Then Britain's genius to thy aid invoke / And spread around the rich, high-clustering oak: / King of the woods!" The cedar by contrast was shown to be "like some great eastern king", destroying everything in its shade, "Secure and shelter'd, every subject lies; / But, robb'd of moisture, sickens, droops, and dies" (V.61-63; V.111-20).</p>
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<p>Wordsworth's "The Haunted Tree" depicts the oak in a similar way. His tree is an image of the English gentry's authority, rooted, paternalist, like Burke's tree-like constitution. Like Knight, Wordsworth opposes his English tree to an Oriental monarch&#8212;to a Sultan&#8212;a standard figure of political and sexual despotism:</p>
<blockquote>Nor doth our human sense<br/>
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy<br/>
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak<br/>
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired<br/>
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords<br/>
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use<br/>
Was fashioned; whether by the hand of Art,<br/>
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought<br/>
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs<br/>
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose<br/>
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.<br/>
(lines 1-15)</blockquote>
<p>The phrase "time-dismantled oak" alludes to Cowper's poem "Yardley Oak" in which the aged tree is made a symbol of Britain's ancient constitution, a constitution so deeply rooted in the past that, like the landed gentry on whose estates oaks grew, it should offer stability (III.77-83).<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#5"><sup>5</sup></a> Wordsworth had borrowed from Cowper's poem before, in "Yew-Trees" and <i>The Excursion</i><a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#6"><sup>6</sup></a>: there as here Wordsworth's oaks, like Cowper's, are not just English trees but trees of Englishness&#8212;or rather icons of a conservative and anti-revolutionary identification of national unity with the landed gentry and the 1688 constitutional settlement. Similarly Southey, admirer of Burke and editor of Cowper, claimed the order of the nation to depend on men "whose names and families are older in the country than the old oaks upon their estates" (I.11-12).</p>
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<p>The politics of "The Haunted Tree" are more complex than are Southey's Tory polemics. Wordsworth examines, when Southey does not, the power relations implicit in the Burkeian model of authority. He shows these power relations to be constructed upon sexual oppositions. His oak is a sublime male sheltering a beautiful female, whose presence tempers and mollifies his masculine authority: it "affords / Couch beautiful" for the Lady of the poem. Burke had understood political authority in these terms: Caesar, in Burke's discussion of the sublime, had achieved political power by combining the awe-inspiring masculinity of the warrior with attractive feminine qualities ("Philosophical Enquiry" 111). The man of sublime authority had, furthermore, a duty to protect the vulnerable and weak (170-71). Wordsworth's poem sexualizes nature in similar terms: masculinity is awe-inspiring and sublime, femininity tender and beautiful. It places this gendering of power, adapted from Burke, against a potentially aggressive masculinity whose power is that of unsocialized self-assertion, threatening rape. Burkeian paternal masculinity, tempered by the feminine, confronts the Oriental Sultan, a figure of Eastern political and sexual despotism. The paternal authority that the Burkeian oak symbolizes is "dismantled" by age and tempered by the beautiful. It is protective rather than subordinative, traditional and rooted rather than aggressive and despotic.</p>
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<p>There was a political context for the poem, not immediately apparent today. In July 1819 the first two cantos of Byron's <i>Don Juan</i> were published. To Wordsworth their licentious wit and sexual theme were dangerously corrupting. In a letter of January 1820 he called Don Juan "that infamous publication" and referred to the "despicable quality of the powers requisite for [its] production," adding "I am persuaded that <i>Don Juan</i> will do more harm to the English character, than anything of our time; not so much as a Book;&#8212;But thousands who would be afraid to have it in that shape, will batten upon choice bits of it in the shape of Extracts." He bemoaned the fact that the close association of its editor with Byron had prevented the <i>Quarterly Review</i> from defending the threatened "English character": "every true-born Englishman will regard the pretension of the Review to the character of a faithful defender of the Institutions of the country, as <i>hollow</i>" (William and Dorothy Wordsworth II: 579).</p>
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<p>In <i>Don Juan</i>, as in the earlier <i>Bride of Abydos</i>, Byron was widely thought to have poeticized his own sexual history. He used Oriental figures to image himself as one who preferred sexual conquest to Wordsworthian solitude-in-nature: "By solitude I mean a Sultan's (not / A Hermit's), with a haram for a grot" ("Poetical Works," <i>Don Juan</i> I.87). He had also portrayed Orientalism as "the only poetical policy" guaranteed to achieve commercial success, as an undemanding literary trend ("Letters and Journals" II: 68):</p>
<blockquote>Oh that I had the art of easy writing<br/>
What should be easy reading! could I scale<br/>
Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing<br/>
Those pretty poems never known to fail,<br/>
How quickly would I print (the world delighting)<br/>
A Grecian, Syrian or Assyrian tale;<br/>
And sell you, mix'd with western sentimentalism,<br/>
Some samples of the finest Orientalism!<br/>
("Poetical Works," <i>Beppo</i> 51)</blockquote>
<p>Byron's Orientalist poetry portrayed English character and institutions as repressive and tame; similarly, the publication of his verses on his own failed marriage suggested that he saw poetry as a means of publicly declaring his own personal refusal to be bound by such restrictions. Wordsworth was disgusted by their publication as he was by <i>Don Juan</i> not only because their sexual theme threatened his conservative vision of character and society but because they corrupted poetry's r&#244;le as the defender of true-born Englishness.</p>
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<p>The second canto of <i>Don Juan</i> contains an Orientalist erotic fantasy in which the young Juan, washed ashore on an island governed by a pirate, meets the pirate's daughter Haid&#233;e "the greatest heiress of the Eastern Isles" "and like a lovely tree" (II.128). Dressed by Haid&#233;e in Turkish clothes, Juan becomes the object of her desire and, when her father leaves the island on a voyage:</p>
<blockquote>Then came her freedom, for she had no mother,<br/>
So that, her father being at sea, she was<br/>
Free as a married woman, or such other<br/>
Female, as where she likes may freely pass,<br/>
Without even the encumbrance of a brother,<br/>
The freest she that ever gazed on glass<br/>
I speak of Christian lands in this comparison,<br/>
Where wives, at least, are seldom kept in garrison.<br/>
(II.175)</blockquote>
<p>Byron mixed cynical wit about the sexual codes and marital practices of Christian countries with a vision of Juan's and Haid&#233;e's sexual encounter as an erotic escape from all paternal and social authority, an escape in which Haid&#233;e was also able, as Christian wives were not, openly to admit and act upon her sexual desires:</p>
<blockquote>They feared no eyes nor ears on that lone beach;<br/>
They felt no terrors from the night; they were<br/>
All in all to each other; though their speech<br/>
Was broken words, they <i>thought</i> a language there, &#8212;<br/>
And all the burning tongues the Passions teach<br/>
Found in one sigh the best interpreter<br/>
Of Nature's oracle&#8212;first love,&#8212;that all<br/>
Which Eve has left her daughters since her fall.<br/>
(II.189)</blockquote>
<p>He also, in the first canto, attacked Wordsworth in person as "crazed beyond all hope" (I.205) and parodied his "unintelligible" nature poetry (I.90). And in the dedication verses, which were left unpublished (save as a broadside sold in the streets) Wordsworth was attacked along with Southey as a hireling of the aristocracy. Byron depicted Wordsworth as tedious and reactionary and the Laureate as sexually and poetically impotent, as a harem slave of George and his eunuch ministers&#8212;one who would "adore a sultan" and "obey / The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh" (<i>Dedication</i> 11). Southey's knowledge of this Orientalist satire on his poetic and political manhood was probably responsible for his 1821 attack upon Byron's "Satanic School" of poetry in the Preface to his funeral ode for George III, the "Vision of Judgement."</p>
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<p>Wordsworth, like his friend and fellow object of Byron's satire, felt the need to resist Byron's specific attacks and the general example of his Orientalist poetry. For both "Lake poets" Byron's popularity epitomized a worrying tendency in the nation to prefer sensual extravagance over obedience to proper (and usually paternal) authorities and to the poetry that defended them (including their own which continued to be far less popular than Byron's). In 1819 and 1820 this worrying tendency was more than usually evident in the very father of the nation, the monarch. The Prince Regent, who succeeded George III in 1820, had been notoriously extravagant, both sexually and financially, since 1795. In 1816 Wordsworth had declared that "the blame of unnecessary expenditure. . .rests with the Prince Regent" (William and Dorothy Wordsworth II: 334). In 1818 Wordsworth was worried that the Regent's request to Parliament for extra allowances for the other Princes would make it hard for the candidates of the Lowther family to be returned in the election.</p>
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<p>The Regent's extravagance seemed truly Oriental: he spent &#163;155,000 on adding pagodas, minarets, onion-shaped domes and Indian columns to Brighton Pavilion. Thousands more were spent on interior decoration which made the place resemble a seraglio. Rather than display the paternal restraint of his father, the Prince accrued debts of &#163;335,000 and entertained a succession of mistresses, whilst his estranged wife, Caroline, toured Europe, dressed in fashionable Oriental costumes, having numerous affairs. She returned to England in 1820, and Lord Liverpool's Tory Ministry, acting on the King's instigation, had her "tried" before the House of Lords, attempting to produce enough evidence of her sexual misdemeanors to enable it to deny her the title of "Queen" and the accompanying rights and privileges. The trial caused widespread fears of revolution and caused street protests&#8212;a crowd gathered outside the house of the Duke of York viewed Caroline as a victim of George's "Oriental" despotism, shouting "We like princes who show themselves; we don't like Grand Turks who shut themselves up in their seraglio."<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#7"><sup>7</sup></a> Radical and labouring-class protest was accompanied by opposition from middle-class women, who clearly understood that the affair had implications for the sexual politics of the nation: an address to the Queen from the "Ladies of Edinburgh," printed in <i>The Times</i> on 4th September, noted</p>
<blockquote>As your majesty has justly observed, the principles and doctrines now advanced by your accusers do not apply to your case alone, but, if made part of the law of this land, may hereafter be applied as a precedent by every careless and dissipated husband to rid himself of his wife, however good and innocent she may be; and to render his family, however, amiable, illegitimate; thereby destroying the sacred bond of matrimony, and rendering all domestic felicity very uncertain<br/>
(qtd. in Smith 106).</blockquote>
<p>Cartoonists portrayed the threat George's actions posed to the family and to the principle of heredity by turning George's penchant for Oriental decoration against him: one depicted him as a Chinese potentate surrounded by his concubines (his mistresses Lady Hertford, Lady Conyngham and Mrs. Quentin)<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#8"><sup>8</sup></a>. The affair discredited Lord Liverpool's ministry, who were shown to have prostituted parliament's independence rather than lose their places: they had bribed witnesses against Caroline. Wordsworth attended the last day of the trial in November, having expressed some of the sympathy for her that was widely felt in the country.</p>
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<p>In those contexts "The Haunted Tree" can be seen as an oblique answer to the Orientalist fashion, and the poetic, political and moral corruption which, for Wordsworth, that fashion manifested at the heart of Regency Britain. It revives and revises a rural rather than metropolitan, Burkeian rather than Byronic understanding of gender, sexuality and power. It attempts to govern desire by defining masculinity as a benevolent paternalism properly protecting women in particular and the land in general. It implicitly rejects Byron's depiction of the Lake poets as worshippers of the Sultan's eunuchs, whilst seeking to provide a more stable (and ostensibly native) model of masculine power than that provided by the "Sultans" George IV and Byron himself.</p>
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<p>Having outlined the political and aesthetic debates which "The Haunted Tree" addresses I turn now to a detailed close reading of the poem. In the opening lines the threats that characterize the sublime are evoked as possibilities, but are soon banished by the actual scene:</p>
<blockquote>Those silver clouds collected round the sun<br/>
His mid-day warmth abate not, seeming less<br/>
To overshade than multiply his beams<br/>
By soft reflection&#8212;grateful to the sky,<br/>
To rocks, fields, woods. Nor doth our human sense<br/>
Ask, for its pleasure, screen or canopy<br/>
More ample than the time-dismantled Oak<br/>
Spreads o'er this tuft of heath, which now, attired<br/>
In the whole fulness of its bloom, affords<br/>
Couch beautiful as e'er for earthly use<br/>
Was fashioned; whether by the hand of Art,<br/>
That eastern Sultan, amid flowers enwrought<br/>
On silken tissue, might diffuse his limbs<br/>
In languor; or, by Nature, for repose<br/>
Of panting Wood-nymph, wearied with the chase.<br/>
(lines 1-15)</blockquote>
<p>The clouds multiply the sunbeams rather than overshade them, and even time's dismantling of the oak serves only to make it less powerful, more delightful in its provision of just shade enough for one. The "Couch beautiful" is rendered both exotic and erotic by the image of the Sultan diffusing "his limbs / In languor," an eroticism continued in the more "natural" (or rather Ovidian) image of the "panting Wood-nymph." Such eroticism is unusual for Wordsworth. And it is an eroticism based upon what Wordsworth claims to be the masculinity of English nature&#8212;and the nature of English masculinity&#8212;an oak-like strength that creates a safe sensual playground. It is contrasted with the predatory sexual violence upon which Greek nature is founded&#8212;Apollo's pursuit of Daphne caused her to be turned into a tree. And it is capable of lulling the figure of Oriental despotism (political and sexual), the Sultan (a figure to whom the King had been compared often enough in 1819-20). Here, for Wordsworth, the threat of unrestrained monarchical power is lulled by a soft and sensual feminine "heath," itself protected by the shading oak (a tree of English masculinity, traditional, restrained, protective for Burke, Cowper, and Wordsworth himself in <i>The Prelude</i>).</p>
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<p>The poem attacks the sexual politics of the Regent then, in that a Burkeian masculine sublime, an English sheltering tree defined against the possibly violent masculinity of Greek and Turk, makes a space for a feminine and erotic beautiful which can then flower under its protection. The beautiful both softens the tree's masculine authority (as Burke said the beautiful should soften the sublime ("Philosophical Enquiry" 111, 157)) and allows it an erotic satisfaction defined as <i>looking</i>. The feminine is still governed by and defined for the satisfaction of the masculine, but in an affectionate yet formal address: the narrator can offer the tree to the Lady as a place of peace and show himself doing so, subsuming troubling intimations in social generosity:</p>
<blockquote>O Lady! fairer in thy Poet's sight<br/>
Than fairest spiritual creature of the groves,<br/>
Approach;&#8212;and, thus invited, crown with rest<br/>
The noon-tide hour: though truly some there are<br/>
Whose footsteps superstitiously avoid<br/>
This venerable Tree; for, when the wind<br/>
Blows keenly, it sends forth a creaking sound<br/>
(Above the general roar of woods and crags)<br/>
Distinctly heard from far&#8212;a doleful note!<br/>
As if (so Grecian shepherds would have deemed)<br/>
The Hamadryad, pent within, bewailed<br/>
Some bitter wrong. Nor it is unbelieved,<br/>
By ruder fancy, that a troubled ghost<br/>
Haunts the old trunk; lamenting deeds of which<br/>
The flowery ground is conscious. But no wind<br/>
Sweeps now along this elevated ridge;<br/>
Not even a zephyr stirs;&#8212;the obnoxious Tree<br/>
Is mute; and, in his silence, would look down,<br/>
O lovely Wanderer of the trackless hills,<br/>
On thy reclining form with more delight<br/>
Than his coevals in the sheltered vale<br/>
Seem to participate, the while they view<br/>
Their own far-stretching arms and leafy heads<br/>
Vividly pictured in some glassy pool,<br/>
That, for a brief space, checks the hurrying stream!<br/>
(lines 16-40)</blockquote>
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<li>
<p>Yet those troubling intimations are present: the Burkeian tree is haunted by the temptations attendant upon the equation of sublimity, masculinity, and political authority. These are the temptations of masculine self-assertion&#8212;the violent rapes committed by Greek gods. But the rootedness of the tree allows these temptations to remain as ghosts, laid to rest or at least confined within the tree by the poet-narrator, like Sycorax by Prospero. Wordsworth raises and then confines the ghosts. He lays the demons of male power by aligning that power (including his own as a male poet) with the stable and safe ground of a known and little-changing English landscape/landscape of Englishness. He does so by a carefully self-cancelling syntax: the phrase "Nor is it unbelieved" establishes a disturbingly unattributed half-belief in ghosts which taints the beautiful&#8212;as is indicated by the lines "lamenting deeds of which / The flowery ground is conscious." Yet the phrase "no wind / Sweeps now along" then counters this. The repeated negative forms a positive, cancelling the dangerous negative forces of lament and thereby restoring the flowery ground for the Lady to approach. Or, to put it another way, the poem raises the possibility of the defloration of the ground (and of the Lady), only to allay fears by confidently asserting that such violence is absent for the moment. It is a spot (and a poetry) won back from sublime threat and from an intimation of the threatening violence of male desire, in favor of an erotic but also decorous beautiful. Desire will be expressed not as rape but by an entreaty to the Lady which seeks her confidence by preparing the (peaceful) ground. And desire will be satisfied by the voyeurism of the tree watching her "reclining form" and of the narrator imagining them both. Since the whole scene is imagined <i>for</i> the Lady it acts, at the same time, as a gift to her in which offers for a more direct and intimate relationship are encoded, an encoding which, if understood, might lead her actually to accept.</p>
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<li>
<p>The difficulty of containing the violence traditionally inherent in masculine authority is apparent in the word "obnoxious." Meaning principally "vulnerable to harm," "subject to authority," the word also meant, then though more commonly now, "harmful."<a href="/praxis/ecology/fulford/fulford.html#9"><sup>9</sup></a> The vulnerable "time-dismantled" tree remains haunted by intimations of harm and violence: it may be "mute" but a silent ambiguity remains. What also remain, although the poem works hard to contain them, are allusions to other poems. These trouble the serenity that the poem seeks. The ancient and lone tree on "this elevated ridge" and the "Wanderer of the trackless hills" recall the bleak and disturbing pairing in "The Thorn" of the tree and the lone woman in a landscape haunted by violent death. Working against such allusions, however, are others which show that disturbance can lead to a greater harmony: "it sends forth a creaking sound / (Above the general roar of woods and crags) / Distinctly heard from far&#8212;a doleful note" (lines 22-24) echoes Coleridge's "This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison," in which the senses "keep the heart / Awake to Love and Beauty" and the "last rook" "flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm / For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom / No sound is dissonant which tells of Life" (lines 63-4, 74-6). Further echoes, of <i>Home at Grasmere</i>'s "sheltered vale" and of Coleridge's "Dejection: an Ode," in which solitary melancholy is overcome by appealing and dedicating the verse to a Lady, also help to incorporate disruptive intimations within a harmonious social community in nature. It is an allusive strategy designed to temper the visionary power of the solitary sublime, which Wordsworth had explored in 1802 in the "Immortality" ode in reaction and contradistinction to Coleridge's "Dejection", with "Dejection's" beautiful appeal to feminine sympathy.</p>
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<p>The last eight lines of the poem replace the troubling sounds of the tree with the loving look of a male unbending his solitary uprightness, as Burke had declared he should, because entranced and completed by the female that he shelters in her appealingly available beauty: "in his silence, would look down. . ." This scene complements, rather than rejects, Coleridge's less paternal and more desperate appeal to female sympathy in "Dejection." This scene is more delightful for the male tree than are&#8212;in the poem's very last lines&#8212;their own reflections for the "coeval" trees in the sheltered vale. Yet viewing those reflections is itself a powerful act, since it allows a momentary self-knowledge "vividly pictured" out of the flux of "the hurrying stream" of time and space:</p>
<blockquote>...while they view<br/>
Their own far-stretching arms and leafy heads<br/>
Vividly pictured in some glassy pool,<br/>
That, for a brief space, checks the hurrying stream!<br/>
(lines 37-40)</blockquote>
<p>Powerful though it is, however, the privileged picture that these waterside trees together gain of themselves is potentially narcissistic (and Narcissus was changed into a waterside plant). It is less permanent than the reconciliation of sublime and beautiful, of male and female available to the poetic tree and Lady.</p>
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<p>The narrator lays his sole and potentially violent possession of masculine authority to rest in a sexualized nature, making of the object world a mythical place in which the sublime violence of rape and metamorphosis is replaced by a beautiful viewing. This viewing completes and delights the independent male and offers the female secure sensual pleasure (no apples to pluck). She is, of course, in a subordinate position as were all women and most men in the oak-like paternalist constitution that Burke and Wordsworth supported.</p>
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<li>
<p>The landscape of "The Haunted Tree" is not an evasion or denial of political and social issues. It is not a displacement of such issues into some secondary area of nature. On the contrary, it is a modification of an eighteenth-century tradition in which the landscape was treated as a testing ground for the moral and social health of the nation, as the place upon which proper authority could be measured. That tradition was itself founded on the fact that the politics of local landscapes were also national politics: it was the ownership of land which gave the nobility and gentry political power and which defined their duties in the state. The politics of nature in Regency Britain were not substitutes for some more fundamental level of politics but were vital in a nation in which reform of a parliament still dominated by the landed gentry was the most important issue. Burke, Cowper and Price had redefined and reasserted the authority of the gentry in their iconography of landscape. To this Wordsworth added an anti-Byronic anti-Regent redefinition of the sexual politics of the Burkeian sublime. In doing so he countered Orientalist fashions and the corruption they revealed in the contemporary aristocracy.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>"The Haunted Tree" achieves what I think it is appropriate to call a mythologization of nature. Like Greek myth it places issues of power and desire at the heart of the national landscape. In a critique of Greek myth, however, it founds English nature not on rape and metamorphosis, but sensual playfulness (including the playful language of the poem itself)&#8212;on a looking but not touching. This playfulness flourishes when the ghosts of male violence that haunt the scene have been confined within the oak of masculine self-restraining strength. Narrator and Lady, poet and reader can then meet in a land safe for loving play (or at least for voyeuristic looking). It is a poetic land in which one encounters the human as if it were natural and the natural as if it were human&#8212;a dreamy and langorous land of representation poised between self and other, subject and object, power and love, violence and peace, sight and sound. It is a land, Wordsworth suggests, in which poetry must make men live lest the solitary man, like a despotic ruler or usurping poet, hear in all things only his own violent desire, see only his own beloved self. It is a green land and, Wordsworth would have us believe, a pleasant one too. But within its greenness, within the ecological and social harmony it would teach us, is a paternalism that should give us pause. To love nature, Wordsworth shows, involves remaking it in our own image&#8212;an image in which traditional hierarchies and inequalities not only persist but are desired. Wordsworth's green England, by 1820 at least, is not Bate's but Burke's, not revolutionary but conservative, not red but blue.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Bate, Jonathan. <i>Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition.</i> London and New York: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Burke, Edmund. <i>A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.</i> Ed. James T. Boulton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Reflections on the Revolution in France.</i> Ed. Conor Cruise O'Brien. London: Penguin, 1982.</p>
<p class="hang">Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1973-82). <i>Letters and Journals of Lord Byron.</i> Ed. Leslie Marchand, 12 vols. London: Murray, 1973-82.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Complete Poetical Works.</i> Ed. Jerome J. McGann. 7 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.</p>
<p class="hang">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <i>The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.</i> Ed. E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1912.</p>
<p class="hang">Cowper, William. <i>The Poems of William Cowper.</i> 3 vols. Ed. John D. Baird and Charles Ryskamp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980-95.</p>
<p class="hang">Daniels, Stephen. "The Political Iconography of Woodland in Later Georgian England." <i>The Iconography of Landscape.</i> Ed. Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.</p>
<p class="hang">Daniels, Stephen and Charles Watkins, "Picturesque Landscaping." <i>The Politics of the Picturesque.</i> Ed. Stephen Copley and Peter Garside. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 13-41.</p>
<p class="hang">Fulford, Tim. "Cowper, Wordsworth, Clare: the Politics of Trees." <i>The John Clare Society Journal</i> 14 (1995): 47-59.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth.</i> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Romanticism and Masculinity.</i> Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Wordsworth, Cowper and the Language of Eighteenth-Century Politics." <i>Early Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth.</i> Ed. Thomas Woodman. Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan 1998. 117-33.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Wordsworth's 'Yew-Trees': Politics, Ecology and Imagination." <i>Romanticism</i> 1 (1995): 272-88.</p>
<p class="hang">Jarvis, Robin. <i>Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel.</i> Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Knight, Richard Payne. <i>The Landscape.</i> 2nd ed. London, 1795.</p>
<p class="hang">Labb&#233;, Jacqueline. <i>Romantic Visualities.</i> Basingstoke and New York: Macmillan, 1998.</p>
<p class="hang">Levinson, Marjorie. <i>Wordsworth's Great Period Poems.</i> Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.</p>
<p class="hang">Liu, Alan. <i>Wordsworth: The Sense of History.</i> Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.</p>
<p class="hang">Locke, John. <i>An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.</i> Ed. Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.</p>
<p class="hang">McGann, Jerome J. <i>The Romantic Ideology.</i> Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1983.</p>
<p class="hang">Ruddick, William. "Liberty trees and loyal oaks: emblematic presences in some English poems of the French Revolutionary period." <i>Reflections of Revolution: Images of Romanticism</i>. Ed. Alison Yarrington and Kelvin Everest. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Schama, Simon. <i>Landscape and Memory.</i> London: Harper Collins, 1995.</p>
<p class="hang">Simpson, David. <i>Wordsworth's Historical Imagination.</i> New York and London: Methuen, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">Smith, E. A. <i>A Queen on Trial: The Affair of Queen Caroline.</i> Stroud, Gloucs: Alan Sutton, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Southey, Robert. <i>Essays, Moral and Political.</i> 2 vols. London, 1832.</p>
<p class="hang">Wiley, Michael. <i>Romantic Geography: Wordsworth and Anglo-European Space.</i> Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998.</p>
<p class="hang">Williams, Raymond. <i>Marxism and Literature.</i> Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William. <i>The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.</i> 5 vols. Ed. E. de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940-49.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. <i>The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, 1806-17</i>. 2nd ed. Ed. E. de Selincourt, rev. Mary Moorman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969.</p>
</div>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="indent"><a name="1"> </a>1&#160;&#160;Although the park is not named within the poem.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="2"> </a>2&#160;&#160;See Levinson, and see Liu; also McGann, p. 91.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="3"> </a>3&#160;&#160; The discussion appears in book II, chapter 27 of Locke (pp. 330-31).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="4"> </a>4&#160;&#160; This political tree-symbolism is discussed in Schama, pp. 53-74.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="5"> </a>5&#160;&#160;Wordsworth's line echoes lines 50-52, 103-4. See the discussion in Fulford (1995).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="6"> </a>6&#160;&#160;See Fulford (1995 [a]) and (1998).<br/></p>
<div style="text-align: left">
<p class="indent"><a name="7"> </a>7&#160;&#160;Letter of 21 June 1820, from Princess Lieven to Prince Metternich, quoted in Smith, p. 40.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="8"> </a>8&#160;&#160;"The bill thrown out, but the pains and penalties inflicted" (15 November 1820), reproduced in Smith, p. 142.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="9"> </a>9&#160;&#160;The word appears in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, where its ambiguity reveals the fallen Satan's vulnerability and his harmfulness as he enters Eden ready to tempt Eve: "Who aspires must down as low / As high he soared, obnoxious first or last / To basest things" (IX, 169-71). Wordsworth's use of the word here makes his tree <i>possibly</i> Satanic, <i>possibly</i> one vulnerable to an occupation by the evil spirit of Satanic desire. But in the poem as a whole the temptation to know good and evil and the sexual fall that ensues is refused. There is no serpentine rape of Eve, no sublime pursuit of knowledge and power by the male narrator to its independent but bitter end.<br/></p>
</div>
</div>
</div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/fulford-tim">Fulford, Tim</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/592" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poetry</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/tags/romanticism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">romanticism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1282" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">landscape</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/tags/gender" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">gender</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/tags/sexuality" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sexuality</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/682" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Orientalism</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/628" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">empire</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/dorothy-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Dorothy Wordsworth</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:05:36 +0000rc-admin22483 at http://www.rc.umd.edu"Sweet Influences": Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html
<div class="field field-name-field-published field-type-date field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth"><span class="date-display-single" property="collex:date" datatype="gYearMonth" content="2001-11-01T00:00:00-05:00">November 2001</span></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-resource-index field-type-entityreference field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/praxis/ecology/index.html">Romanticism and Ecology</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden view-mode-fulltext"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><!--Couldn't selectively extract content, Imported Full Body :( May need to used a more carefully tuned import template.-->
<h2 style="text-align: center">Romanticism &amp; Ecology</h2>
<h3 style="text-align: center">"Sweet Influences": Human/Animal Difference and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1806<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#*">*</a></sup></h3>
<h4 style="text-align: center">Kurt Fosso, Lewis &amp; Clark College<br/></h4>
<div style="text-align: center">
<p class="epigraph">Ours is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,<br/>
Manifold motions making little speed,<br/>
And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed. <br/><br/>&#8212;Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Psyche"</p>
</div>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Were a seventeenth-century English painter to travel in time to a gallery in the latter half of the eighteenth century he or she might well exclaim, wide-eyed, "Where did all the animals come from?" For the animals depicted in those portraits and landscapes had somehow migrated from the backgrounds they had previously inhabited to become foregrounded pictorial subjects in themselves: cattle in fields, dogs and horses standing alone or beside proud owners, horses arranged like Grecian statuary, wild birds, exotic lions, and inquisitive monkeys painstakingly depicted in quasi-natural habitats. Where indeed had all these animals come from, and why were they here? <a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#1"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The phenomenon of George Stubbs (1724-1806), the renowned English "horse painter," would itself have shocked our traveler. Consider, for example, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.42287.html">Stubbs's portrait of "Captain Samuel Sharpe Pocklington with His Wife, Pleasance, and possibly His Sister, Frances" (1769)</a>. Although anthropocentrically enough titled and most likely commissioned as a marriage portrait, this painting is really a study of Captain Pocklington's horse. Whether or not the Captain or his wife was cognizant of the fact, Stubbs, whose popular <i>Anatomy of the Horse</i> had been published three years before in 1766, was clearly using the much-prized, status-confirming animal not just as the group portrait's focus but also as its main point of interest. It is the horse around whom the three human figures are posed, and it is the horse, not the good Captain, who receives Mrs. Pocklington's affectionate attentions. In his life-time Stubbs painted many such animal-oriented works, including horse portraits like the well-known "Whistlejacket" (1762) and the series of equine formal studies, "Mares and Foals" (1762-68, 1776), as well as numerous paintings of dogs and more exotic creatures&#8212;lions, zebras, and the occasional rhinoceros. Stubbs had made a career of it.</p>
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<p>Similarly, John Constable's landscape paintings are populated by as many animals as people, with animals frequently serving as a work's focus or focusing agent, as in "The Haywain" (1821) and "Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows" (1829). In each tableau a lone, attentive dog&#8212;the sole depicted observer&#8212;mediates the viewer's gaze, directing it to a dramatic animal scene of wain-pulling horses.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#2">2</a></sup> These and other creative works of the Romantic period interconnect human perception and animal perception or being, human economy and animals' various places within it or outside it, and by so doing foreground both human-animal similarities and differences, among other things. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries such representations of animals indeed are by no means merely familiar (or exotic) subject matter or handy rhetorical tools readily substitutable by other signs. On the contrary, in these years animal depictions are fundamentally tied to Englishmen's shifting social existence, as indices of cultural change, of difference, and of identity.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#3">3</a></sup></p>
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<p>Not coincidentally, and for more than a few thinkers of the time not a little fortuitously, the human monarchy of nature had itself recently been toppled and reconceptualized under a new system of animal classification.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#4">4</a></sup> A Copernican revolution all its own, the Linnaean taxonomy, as utilized by English natural scientists like Erasmus Darwin, resituated <i>homo sapiens</i> as one animal among many similar, interconnected species. Hence, in the preface to his epidemiological taxonomy, <i>Zoonomia</i> (1794),<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#5">5</a></sup> Darwin could argue that, although the "Creator of all things has infinitely diversified the works of his hands," he has also "stamped a certain similitude on the features of nature, that demonstrate to us, that the whole is <i>one family</i>of one parent" (B; original emphasis). Darwin's metaphor of the family aptly sums up the then-emerging view of the biological commonality of all creatures, a view that posited creatures' mutual bonds and shared affections&#8212;and also significantly implies the social connections within and between species. In the widely popular natural histories by Buffon and Bewick one similarly finds animals' social nature to be a foregrounded concern, these histories' illustrations depicting animals in "clearly defined social setting[s]," with careful attention also given to their relationship to human economy (Potts 18).</p>
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<p>In a manner equally typical of the Romantic era, Darwin moreover holds the source of human virtue itself to rest in "our intellectual sympathies with . . . the miseries, or with the joys, of our fellow creatures" (255). Our connection <i>to</i> animals is for him, as for others of his time<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#6">6</a></sup>, dependent upon our sympathetic identification <i>with</i> these "our fellow creatures." In this way, eighteenth-century natural history presented to British men and women not just a further blow to traditional notions of the place of human beings&#8212;"a dissolution and reconstitution of conceptual patterns by which natural phenomena had been understood" (Kroeber 18)&#8212;but also an important means of re-envisioning humankind's proper place in the social and natural fabric: as a part of a unifying (albeit for some thinkers also a dislocating)<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#7">7</a></sup> whole of interconnected species&#8212;even of a dynamic "family" of people, horses, dogs, and other, undomesticated creatures.</p>
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<p>In <i>Romantic Ecology</i> Jonathan Bate argues that what poets like William Wordsworth added to this new matrix of an interrelated ecosystem or "economy of nature" (the English title of one of Linnaeus's essays) was their "emphasis on a symbiosis between the economy of nature and the activities of humankind": the Wordsworthian "'one life' within us and abroad" (39-40).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#8">8</a></sup> And, as James Turner observes, this is where animals "came in," answering the psychological call on the part of late-eighteenth-century men and women for a "bulwark" against "the wrenching changes wrought by factory and city" (31-33). The enormous popularity of animals in the period, both in paintings and in zoos, can of course be attributed to other factors as well, ranging from an urban population's nostalgia for rural times and places past<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#9">9</a></sup> to a growing empire's appetite for exoticism.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#10">10</a></sup> But turn-of-the-century animal representations particularly responded to the anxieties and desires prompted by social and political change&#8212;by revolution, war, domestic disrule, and reform&#8212;and by the era's wrenching economic transformations. At a time when age-old "securities of class and status and theological assumptions" were themselves being shattered (McFarland 20), when distrust of government and the old orthodoxies was at an all-time high, and when deep fissures could be glimpsed within England's social, political, and economic landscape, artists responded to these historical pressures by attempting in their works to discover and represent new forms of social organization and subjectivity.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#11">11</a></sup> And it is in this cultural project that animals came into the picture.</p>
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<p>Indeed, for Romantic artists animals particularly satisfied a desire to find alternative, local, and noneconomic means of human connection, a social appeal that is especially prominent in the late-eighteenth-century poetry of Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. During the increasingly turbulent years from 1794 to 1800, including the nadir of the Terror, these two poets depict new forms of social cohesion and identity based upon lasting bonds able to "bind all men together" (Eisold 122). The poets' sociological project leads them to represent communities articulated by mysterious human-animal linkages, as in Wordsworth's "Lines Written in Early Spring," from his and Coleridge's <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> of 1798. Here Wordsworth describes his experience of nature as a product of his abiding belief (most likely owed in part to Erasmus Darwin) that the "human soul" is intricately linked to nature's "fair works" (ll. 5-6). For Karl Kroeber this provocative hypothesis in fact implies the speaker's understanding that "all human cultures are constructed by natural creatures" (45). And the poet's belief indeed suggests not just his pantheism but also his understanding of a profound social connection between human beings and animals, one with the potential to form a "true community . . . / Of many into one incorporate," as Wordsworth describes matters in <i>Home at Grasmere</i> (MS. B.819-20). To a diseased social-political world "where no brotherhood exists" (<i>The Prelude</i> 2.404), human and animal relationships offered to these poets and to other artists important potential bonds for human connection: "mysteries of passion which have made, / And shall continue evermore to make . . . / One brotherhood of all the human race" (10.84-88).</p>
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<p>Although Coleridge himself winced at Wordsworth's lingering "One Life" pantheism (despite the fact that Wordsworth had gleaned much of it from him) and, in Kroeber's words, would in later years "devote major energies . . . to defending a transcendental vision of divinity hostile to Romantic proto-ecological nature poetry" (67), in the waning years of the eighteenth century he generally shared his friend's "proto-ecological" orientation and belief in the divine, and deeply social, power of nature's animals. Notably, in Coleridge's "Fears in Solitude" (1798), the poet, fearing the rumored French invasion of England, finds consolation that in a "spirit-healing nook" a man still may</p>
<blockquote>...lie on fern or withered heath,<br/>
While from the singing lark (that sings unseen<br/>
The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),<br/>
And from the sun, and from the breezy air,<br/><i>Sweet influences</i> trembled o'er his frame. . . . (12-21; emphasis added)</blockquote>
<p>Communion with nature's "best" minstrel produces in the quiet listener "[r]eligious meanings" and "dreams of better worlds" (24, 26) set in stark contrast to a violent world of "[i]nvasion," "fear and rage, / And undetermined conflict" (36-38), a world made all the more despicable by these contrasting, nature-bestowed dreams of more tranquil "society" (218). Nature's harmony here has the power to guide the self from such alienating political preoccupations to "[l]ove, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind" (232)&#8212;thoughts of one's natural connection to his or her "brethren" (155). Like the well-known dictum of Wordsworth's <i>Prelude</i>, that love of nature leads to love of humankind, these lines by Coleridge describe nature's active involvement in fostering community. And, although the lark's music is missing from the poem's concluding description of a now "silent dell" (228) (and even may have been owed to the poet's recollection of a past visit), at the outset that songbird, singing "unseen / The Minstrelsy that solitude loves best," like some "angel in the clouds," singularly contributes to those vital "sweet influences" that tremble over the speaker (19-21, 28) and elicit both his "melancholy" thoughts about his warring "human brethren" (32) and his more hopeful visions of "better worlds" populated by animals and (animal-) loving human beings.</p>
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<p>Coleridge's earlier poem "To A Young Ass" (1794), popular enough to have been lampooned by Lord Byron, similarly represents animals as makers or markers of community and communitarian feeling. It also presents the animal as an emblem of oppression, the "[p]oor little Foal of an oppressed Race" (1).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#12">12</a></sup> The speaker exclaims, "I hail thee <i>Brother</i>&#8212;spite of the fool's scorn! / And fane would take thee with me, in the Dell / Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell" (26-28). The latter reference is to Coleridge's and Robert Southey's ambitious utopian scheme, "Pantisocracy," but we should not let their failure ever to realize that idealized dell overshadow the poem's more immediate aims,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#13">13</a></sup> akin to the French Revolution's own, by then vanishing, goals of <i>libert&#233;, &#233;galit&#233;, fraternit&#233;</i>. The "<i>Brother</i>" foal, italicized in Coleridge's text arguably to emphasize precisely this revolutionary significance,<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#14">14</a></sup> is to be set free&#8212;so the speaker would wish, anyway&#8212;to dwell in "mild Equality" with the poet and his fellow pantisocrats, in a life of work and playful "bray[s] of joy" (34-35). The poem's animal addressee thus serves not just as an exemplum of rural poverty's brutalizing effects but also as a sign and source of resistance to such economic brutalization. For the speaker, true brotherhood, not to mention true equality and liberty, must include the foal. In this Coleridgean manifesto of sorts the principal source of social cohesion rests in the socializing sympathies the foal itself occasions and which its brays repeatedly confirm, in stark contrast to the caged bird in the imprisoning city, whose "warbled melodies" merely "soothe to rest / The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast!" (35-36).</p>
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<p>Wordsworth's "Poor Susan," from <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> of 1800, also describes a caged bird's song, heard by Susan from a London street corner. The lone thrush's singing prompts her to daydream of remembered "Green pastures . . . in the midst of the dale, / Down which she [had] so often . . . tripp'd with her pail" (9-10). In lines later excised at Charles Lamb's urging, the poem's speaker goes on to chastise Susan as a "Poor Outcast" (perhaps a prostitute, then no uncommon condition) who should return to her father's rustic home and, having replaced her fancy loomed dress for a "plain russet" home-spun gown, once again hear a "thrush sing from a tree of its own" (17-20). Here, too, the countryside is depicted as an ideal dell of free animals and concomitantly liberated human beings. By contrast, the city is a place of imprisoned humans and animals alike. At the same time, of course, such liberating communitarian contact with animals is in some manner occasioned by, or is at least responsive to, their past and present suffering.</p>
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<p>To return for a moment to Wordsworth's "Lines Written In Early Spring," we find its poet similarly seeking social connection and belonging, his desires' fulfillment resting in his firm "faith that every flower / Enjoys the air it breathes" (11-12). Yet the flowers' enjoyment of their life processes is, like the thoughts of the birds hopping about nearby him, something he "cannot measure" (14). This conclusion of his is more than a poetical jab at Enlightenment rationalism's tendency to quantify and calculate all things. For these creatures, although sentient and pleasure-loving like the speaker himself, serve as a "measure" of his <i>difference</i> from them as well as from those men unable or unwilling to accept a faith established in opposition to "[w]hat man has made of man" (8). Such faith implicitly seeks a missing or lost form of social cohesion, a form the poem's speaker lacks and fervently desires. Still, despite his depressing awareness of his alienation from his destructive fellow human beings, the poet points to what in Wordsworth's and Coleridge's poetry proves to be an implicit basis for human connection and for humanity's amelioration: that, in spite of, or because of, animals' difference from human beings, nature's creatures nevertheless have this power to "link" together the "human soul" that runs as one life through living things. As other works by Wordsworth and Coleridge reveal, it is in fact this irreducible difference between animals and human beings that ultimately makes such linkages between modern people possible, and even necessary. "What man has made" of animals, and what animals in turn can make of man, becomes a basis, in places even the sole basis, for community.</p>
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<p>Coleridge's "The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem," also from <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> (1800), while of paramount importance in this social articulation of human beings and animals, may well at first seem an odd choice, for it is clearly skeptical about at least some of the connections poets discern between humankind and nature's animals (those animals' thoughts being immeasurable even in Wordsworth's more optimistic "Lines"). Indeed, Coleridge's poem starkly decries our narcissistic tendency to transform nature into but a distorted mirror of ourselves. In a notable turn against classical and Miltonic tradition, and against the "pity-pleading strains" of his own prior poem "To A Nightingale," Coleridge's speaker insists instead that the singing nightingale, rather than being "melancholy" (in accordance with the Greek myth of Philomela), is "full of love / And joyance" (15, 42-43). The <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> notes that the Spenserian word <i>joyance</i> was, according to Samuel Johnson's own lexicographical judgment, obsolete by the eighteenth century. The antiquated term was then reintroduced by Coleridge (and Southey), to become a favorite archaism of later poets like Percy Shelley, as in his avian poem "To A Skylark." Coleridge had recoined the word "joyance" in "Lines on an Autumnal Evening" (1796), and then chose to redeploy the term in "The Nightingale," with the reasonable expectation of the word's antique strangeness to his readers.</p>
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<p>The term "joyance" interestingly denotes as much an activity as a state of feeling or being, referring, unlike the common word "joy," both to feeling joy and to the action of showing it (<i>OED</i>). The archaism thus serves to underline animal nature's active role in altering human feeling: its power to help compose in the listener an active, participatory joy similar to animals' own. Yet while the word "joyance" suggests an active role for nature's creatures<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#15">15</a></sup> and their "sweet influences," at the same time the term's use in these lines also reveals its human authors' limits. Coming as the word does on the heels of the poet's impassioned condemnation of past writers' attributions of "melancholy" to the famed songbird, his own corrective perceptions of "love" and "joyance" in the bird's song must raise suspicions. Is not his revisionist view but the narcissistic antithesis of the rejected Miltonic, and prior Coleridgean, perspective, too simply exchanging avian sadness for avian happiness? While one should think it true that in nature there indeed is "nothing melancholy," given such anti-anthropomorphic, anti-anthropocentric logic as the speaker has proposed, can sentient nature be said to be full of active "joyance" either?<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#16">16</a></sup> In this particular context, the word <i>joyance</i> itself becomes increasingly suspect: as a term that signifies not just being but <i>showing</i>: display, semblance, and, by implication, perception.</p>
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<p>The reader might also raise a skeptical eyebrow when the poet proceeds to describe the singing nightingale as "disburthen[ing]" his "full soul" in an expressive activity analogous to the actions of Coleridge's own proper poet, who similarly "surrender[s] his whole spirit" (48, 29). Such identifications again smack of anthropomorphic narcissism, not to mention of the pathetic fallacy, especially in light of the poet's prior indictment of the solipsistic <i>penseroso</i> whose "melancholy" personifications&#8212;bad figures of speech&#8212;merely tell back "the tale" of his "own sorrows" (20-21). Given Coleridge's staunch rejection of just such artificial "conceit[s]" (23), his treatment of the bird's "joyance" generates troublesome contradictions indeed, contradictions that in turn point to significant problems of perceiving and representing animals (miring the "One Life" doctrine in something of an epistemological quandary). The singing bird, appropriately and traditionally unseen, in this way remains intriguingly beyond the culturally constraining powers of human categorization and understanding. And, in this way, as a text "The Nightingale" provides within itself a curious resistance to its own anthropomorphic reductions, a resistance significant, as it turns out, to the poem's representation of human/animal community.</p>
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<p>This social lesson is revealed principally in the closing lines' repeated adieus to the bird and to its human audience of friends: "Once more, farewell, / Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends! farewell" (109-10). The salutation forms a chiasmus of addresses and addressees:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>farewelllxxxxxxxnightingale<br/>
X<br/>
friendsxxxxxxfarewell</p>
<br/>
</blockquote>
<p>This rhetorical figure serves, along with the associative repetition of the lines' adverbial phrases ("Once more," "once more"), to conflate the avian singer with its human audience. In fact, the chiasmus figuratively connects the bird and its crowd of listeners as one community, engaged in a type of nocturnal conversation. The human friendships of course to some extent precede this meeting in the company of the nightingale (and of its fellow singers in nearby fields), yet the meeting of friends is occasioned by the bird's audible presence. Indeed, the propinquity of these "loitering" listeners (89) is made possible only by the animal "joyance" produced by the nightingale's "love-chant[s]" (48)&#8212;chants that will in turn lead to the next night's consolidating farewells: "till tomorrow eve, . . . a short farewell" (87-88). For, as the poet proclaims, such bird-song is the stuff of answer and provocation, of "skirmish and capricious passagings, / And murmurs musical and swift jug jug" (58-60).</p>
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<p>The phrase "jug jug" itself merits attention. The word <i>jug</i> was one commonly used to signify the notes of nightingales and other songbirds, and so has more sense than nonsense about it (although even such onomatopoeic words as <i>jug</i> are conventional and arbitrary rather than strictly motivated and, for lack of a better word, natural).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#17">17</a></sup> Coleridge's poet strikes a position between cultural revision and traditionalism, arguing for nonmelancholy, perhaps even nonjoyful, "skirmish," and for so customary a description as "jug jug." At the same time, such <i>jugging</i> does "bid us [to] listen" (96), while at the same moment importantly frustrating our attempts to interpret, let alone to reproduce, the intricate song. Rather like the poet's child, who though "Nature's playmate" yet "[m]ars" all its sounds "with his imitative lisp" (92-97),<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#18">18</a></sup> the speaker and his friends mar the bird's inimitable singing, and in fact seem to be drawn together night after night by what the nocturnal scene precisely does <i>not</i> provide them: by what their language of poetic archaisms, onomatopoeias, and other suspect figures of speech cannot reproduce "once more." For the adult friends, as for the child, the nightingale's "love-chant" remains a "fast thick warble" of notes "delicious" for their difference, resistance, complexity, and mystery. Such resistance to knowing bids the bird's human listeners return to become more "[f]amiliar" with enchanted song that remains strange. And in seeking this familiarity with animals the listeners are thereby themselves nightly associated in a ritual-like gathering of initiates poised on the epistemological verge of delimiting perceptions. "The Nightingale" is in this way very much a "conversation poem," as Coleridge subtitled it, but one of limits and transgressions, in which human and animal discourse produces a kind of social conversion based upon linguistic and other forms of discord, violence, and desire.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#19">19</a></sup> And, as shall now be shown, this marring and atonement are themselves really key parts of a deeper, darker Coleridgean and Wordsworthian schema of human and animal "society" as a collective of "sweet influences" prompted by animal "mysteries of passion," including animal suffering and sacrifice.</p>
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<p>Although it might at first appear to be a quite different human/animal scheme that we encounter in Coleridge's well-known lyrical ballad, <i>The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere</i> (1797-98), in fact this poem makes even clearer the violence&#8212;a markedly physical violence&#8212;and atoning acts of sympathy and story-telling that frequently underlie animal-based community. James McKusick sees the story's Mariner, a sea-farer cursed for his thoughtless shooting of an albatross, as at the outset "a Cartesian dualist, a detached observer cut off from any feeling of empathy or participation in the vast world of life that surrounds him," but who is eventually transformed into a Linnaean or Darwinian self "released from his state of alienation from nature" (385).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#20">20</a></sup> For, according to McKusick, the Mariner learns "what the Albatross came to teach him: that he must cross the boundaries that divide him from the natural world, through unmotivated acts of compassion between 'man and bird and beast'" (387). This moral, which Coleridge later criticized as being too explicit, is well known even to those unfamiliar with the poem, being a message also proffered by <i>Goody Two-Shoes</i> and other children's books of the eighteenth century:<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#21">21</a></sup></p>
<blockquote>He prayeth best who loveth best,<br/>
All things both great and small:<br/>
For the dear God, who loveth us,<br/>
He made and loveth all. (647-50)</blockquote>
<p>Oddly, and in contradistinction to Anna Barbauld's, Erasmus Darwin's, and others' belief that the humane treatment of animals was a key means to human moral improvement&#8212;for Barbauld, specifically for improving the lower and middle classes&#8212;it is because of the Mariner's murderous <i>dis</i>regard for one of God's beloved creatures that he comes to be morally improved. His release from the curse placed upon him is earned, as he himself sees it, by his unconscious blessing of other, decidedly less desirable creatures: "water-snakes" swimming alongside his ship. "O happy living things!" he cries in a heart-felt "spring of love" (274, 276). By blessing them "unaware" (277), without ulterior motivation, the Mariner earns the pity of two local nature spirits, one of whom he overhears proclaim to the other that, "the man hath penance done, / And penance more will do" for having offended a fellow-spirit who "lov'd the bird that lov'd the man / Who shot him with his bow" (409-10). However just or unjust the Mariner's divinely bestowed punishment may be, his show of love for animals spares him the gruesome, zombie-like life-in-death inflicted upon his shipmates (who had first condemned but then praised his murder of the albatross, making them, in the words of the poem's later-added commentary, "accomplices in the crime"). It also leads him, by these mysterious rites of suffering, to regard all life, both human and animal, as sacred and interconnected. But "penance more" is nonetheless owed the natural world, and it is in this indebtedness that the social aspects of Coleridge's sea-tale are revealed.</p>
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<p>At his tale's end the Mariner relates how, his ghost ship having sunk off the shore of his native land, he at once found himself stricken</p>
<blockquote>With a woeful agony,<br/>
Which forc'd me to begin my tale<br/>
And then it left me free.<br/>
Since then at an uncertain hour<br/>
Now oftimes and now fewer,<br/>
That anguish comes and makes me tell<br/>
My ghastly aventure. (612-18)</blockquote>
<p>The Mariner thereupon must tell that chosen listener the tale and its compassionate moral. The narrative in this way provides an explanatory coda of its origins: that "penance" owed for animal murder, what the shipmates misinterpreted as beneficent sacrifice, drives the narrative to be rehearsed (reproduced and exchanged), in order, one must suspect, to disseminate this hard-won wisdom about humankind's treatment of, and moral dependence upon, animals. Hence, the Mariner's story is one we overhear as it is told by him to a diverted, spell-bound "wedding-guest," at that most traditional and social of rituals, a marriage&#8212;a setting that underlines the tale's social significance.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#22">22</a></sup> "[S]tunn'd" and "of sense forlorn" from the tale's telling, the guest arises the next day a "sadder and a wiser man" (655-59), his altered condition a result of that narrative. Such learning about animals and human beings completes what might well be called an eco-communitarian circuit, manifesting as it does a system of intertwined human and animal relationships transgressed against in the Mariner's ignorant slaughter of the albatross and then repaired, in part, by his benediction to the water-snakes and his subsequent transmissions of wisdom to a series of distraught but enthralled "guests."</p>
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<p>Accompanying this animal-oriented wisdom is the underlying guilt upon which such narratives and their implicit cultures are based: a sacrificial<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#23">23</a></sup> originary before whose knot of sin cannot be undone but whose irredeemable violence makes atonement and its totemic human-animal wisdom possible. Narrative in <i>The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere</i> is in this way eucharistic and guilt-ridden; hence, perhaps, the poem's oddly irreconcilable Christian imagery, including the Mariner's "cross bow" (79), a weapon that for McKusick embodies both the "destructive tendency" of technology and "the traditional Christian imagery of sacrifice and atonement" (386). (The dead albatross itself substitutes for a cross when the sailors hang it around the Mariner's neck). Coleridge's poem presents a genealogy of human violence and atonement regarding animals, and reveals itself to be predicated, as a narrative, upon such transgressions and their authors' attempts to amend them. Yet, as the text makes clear, such acts of atonement are never enough. The mariner's guilt is, rather like his tale, and like Adam's own sin, irrevocable and perpetual, and yet also, in its case, consolidating of relationships ("love") between human beings and animals and between those who grieve and atone; in this instance, between a saddened guest and his haunted mariner-host.</p>
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<p>Like other such transformational tales, the Mariner's story of sacrifice and atonement is ambivalently predicated upon animal difference and relatedness ("He made and loveth all").<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#24">24</a></sup> It acknowledges the commonality and otherness upon which human-animal relationships, here as in "The Nightingale" and in Wordsworth's "Lines," are inherently founded and structured. Coleridge's <i>Ancyent Marinere</i> is in this sense an allegory not just of human benevolence toward animals&#8212;an RSPCA forerunner of sorts&#8212;but of the binding invisible connections between human and animal realms. It tells how such connections can form communities of human beings bonded by their shared observance of past transgression and present or future atonement. The perpetuity of the narrative and its serial community of tellers and listeners indeed argues for the long journey such wisdom requires. In fact, as we find in Wordsworth's "Hart-Leap Well" (1799) and in <i>Home at Grasmere</i> (1800, 1806),<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#25">25</a></sup> such community is never won easily nor ever entirely; it is attained through violence and the post hoc lamenting of what "man" has done to animal.</p>
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<p>In <i>Home at Grasmere</i> Wordsworth describes his and his sister Dorothy's journey into Grasmere's inclement vale. He lingers, as they lingered then, entranced in the locale of Hart-leap Well, which auspiciously intimated to them a "milder day" and "fairer world" to come (B.237-38). This locodescriptive passage is also an intertextual one, alluding to Wordsworth's previously mentioned, appositely titled lyrical ballad "Hart-Leap Well." The latter poem recalls the medieval knight Sir Walter's renowned chasing down of a hart, which then killed itself in its last of three desperate leaps, leaving the spot "curs'd" (124, 141-42). As Raimonda Modiano points out, "by voluntarily leaping to its death" the deer transformed a hunt into a sacrifice; hence Sir Walter's ritualistic raising of three stone pillars to commemorate the dead stag (497). And yet Walter's act of memorialization seems ultimately inconsequential or even impious, due to its lack of the atonement required for such acts of sacrifice and commemoration. "Without mourning," Modiano observes, Walter's action becomes "profane" (499), a "murder," in the words of the poem. David Perkins sees this hunter's killing of the hart as an act of "solipsistic egoism," similar in its way to the Mariner's own "egoistic self-assertion" and rightly memorialized not just by the pillars but by the adjacent pleasure house Walter builds as an expression of his selfish, libidinal desire ("Wordsworth" 439).</p>
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<p>In lieu of its proper mourning, the hart's death is lamented, we learn, not just by the poem's narrator and tale-telling shepherd but also by nature itself. "This beast not unobserv'd by Nature fell," the poet states, "[h]is death was mourn'd by sympathy divine" (163-64). The animal's "murder" has for the narrator two important "lesson[s]" to teach: first, that we ought never to "blend our pleasure or our pride / With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels" (179-80), and second, as in the <i>Ancyent Marinere</i>, that nature's "Being" "[m]aintains a deep and reverential care" for those "quiet creatures whom he loves" (167-68, 177-80). Yet, although "Hart-Leap Well" does in some sense represent an ecological interpenetration of cultural and natural observances&#8212;"how the conventionally antagonistic 'cultural' and 'natural' may in fact felicitously interanimate" (Kroeber 55)&#8212;the poem ultimately presents a picture less of human-animal felicity than of struggle, at least of past struggle.</p>
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<p>In <i>Home at Grasmere</i> it is at this ambivalent topographical and intertextual spot of Hart-leap Well that Wordsworth and Dorothy, still transfixed in "awful trance," receive the quasi-religious "intimation of the milder day / Which is to come, the fairer world than this" (238-39). This prognosis or prophecy, owed to their more proper observance of animal suffering, becomes its own form of sacred election, raising them up:</p>
<blockquote>...dejected as we were<br/>
Among the records of that doleful place<br/>
By sorrow for the hunted beast who there<br/>
Had yielded up his breath. . . . (240-43)</blockquote>
<p>In their "trance" the poet and his sister experience a religious "Vision of humanity and of God / The Mourner, God the Sufferer" (243-44), of God the Paschal Lamb, that re-emphasizes this passage's intertextual connection to animal sacrifice and to the ritualized eucharistic fellowship that such death or suffering can make possible. In their ambivalent intermingling of "sadness" and "joy" at this past prospect of a creature "suffer[ing] wrongfully" the thoughtful couple finds, significantly, a "promise": that through their observance of past sacrifice&#8212;their Christian-like sacralizing of a prior, profane "murder"&#8212;their "love" and "knowledge" might "secure" them a "portion" of nature's benevolence (247-55). On the one hand, Wordsworth of course simply hopes that in a world where the death of a hart is signified by nature the lives of humans will receive a similarly blessed accounting. But, on the other hand, as this strange "episode in mourning" shows, it is humans rather than nature spirits who must first undertake such rectifying work (Modiano 499).</p>
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<p>Their requisite mourning in turn implies that animal death, nature's "tribute of inevitable pain" (l. 841), is what provides the lasting basis for Wordsworthian dwelling and community in Grasmere's vale: first profaning violation (botched animal sacrifice, "murder"), then sacralizing compensation of human sorrow, and finally the hoped-for blessings of fellowship and dwelling such observance may bequeath&#8212;blessings that, the poet and his sister hope, may extend beyond a solitary "pair seceding from the common world" to encompass "all the Vales of the earth and all mankind" (249, 256).<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#26">26</a></sup> And yet, in the intertextual domain of these closely linked poems, at least one question remains. Might this couple's aforementioned "joy" at a retrospect of animal suffering, given such joy's proscription in the first of the two lessons of "Hart-Leap Well," profane their commemoration of the hart, thus marring their communitarian fortunes? If such mingling of "joy" and "sadness" at the hart's death makes mourning incomplete or improper, would matters then require, as in Coleridge's sea-tale, that further narratives or revisitations be proffered? Profanation may be unavoidable here, as animal death in Wordsworth and Coleridge ever wavers between murder and sacrifice. At the same time, such ambivalently registered failure and incompleteness may also serve to afford people, in <i>Home at Grasmere</i> as in both "The Nightingale" and <i>The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere</i>, further possibilities for mourning and for its continuing promise of social cohesion.</p>
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<p>However one in fact sorts out this dilemma, the couple's sense of belonging to a place, and their concomitant sense of belonging to one another&#8212;of "twain" made "pair"&#8212;is grounded in their, and in their hoped-for community's, uneasy relationship to (past) animals. Their prospect of dwelling in the death-shadowed valley will be secured by their love for the sacred murdered hart and their (insufficient) sadness at its loss, in a community that is, in contrast to what the poem's speaker espouses, necessarily <i>not</i> "without dependence or defect, / Made for itself and happy in itself, / Perfect Contentment, Unity entire" (167-70). For such community in Grasmere is neither independent nor even necessarily "happy in itself"; it is uneasily dependent upon prior animal death for its blessings.</p>
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<p>This communal dependency upon animal loss is the subject also of another episode, where the poet ponders the likely fate of a missing "lonely pair / Of milk-white Swans" (322-23) that had frequented the lake:</p>
<blockquote>These above all, ah, why are they not here<br/>
To share in this day's pleasure? From afar<br/>
They came, like Emma and myself, to live<br/>
Together here in peace and solitude,<br/>
Choosing this Valley, they who had the choice<br/>
Of the whole world. . . . We knew them well&#8212;I guess<br/>
That the whole Valley knew them&#8212;but to us<br/>
They were more dear than may be well believed . . . (324-29, 332-34)</blockquote>
<p>With regard to the actual fate of the swans, Wordsworth speculates that some local shepherd may "have seized the deadly tube / And parted them, incited by a prize / Which . . . / He should have spared; or haply both are gone, / One death, and that were mercy given to both" (352-57). In reasoning thus he knows he seems to "wrong" the very community he and Dorothy are seeking to join.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#27">27</a></sup> But the birds' loss nonetheless requires explanation, and seems to threaten the isolated human pair's own place in the vale. Yet, in thus mourning and questioning the swans' likely fate something different results: "No, we are not alone," the poet assures his sister, "we do not stand, / My Emma, here misplaced and desolate, / Loving what no one cares for but ourselves" (646-48). As with their mourning of the hart, this grief over putative past animal suffering or death also promises to earn them inclusion in Grasmere. "Look where we will," the poet holds, "some human heart has been / Before us with its offering. . . . Joy spreads and sorrow spreads" (659-60, 659)&#8212;at Hart-leap Well and now here by the lakeside, as a further covenant formed of profane sacrifice and of memorializing, (re)sacralizing grief.</p>
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<p>If their community in Grasmere is a "unity," then, it is for Wordsworth a profoundly totemic and eucharistic one, comprised of mournful humans and mourned, missing or dead animals and founded both in violence and in ensuing, responsive practices of commemoration. As in Coleridge's <i>Ancyent Marinere</i>, such society is uneasily based upon past human/animal difference and transgression, as it is upon present and future acts of responsive, supplemental human atonement. It is in the end a troubling "knowledge" imparted to (or by) him and Dorothy, but at the same time it is social knowledge that transforms the vale of Grasmere into a prospect of a "community . . . / Of many into one incorporate": of a social formation of "[c]ompanions, brethren, [and] consecrated friends" (347) sanctified by the communion and "brotherhood" that human and animal relationships&#8212;forms of animal sacrifice and human atonement&#8212;"once more" provide.</p>
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<p>For Wordsworth and Coleridge, and for other Romantic-period artists, human beings' relationships with animals are vitally social and efficaciously vexed. "Love" for animals seems, often as not in the above poems, and in others such as Wordsworth's "There was a Boy" (a.k.a. the "Boy of Winander"), to arise out of the gulf of difference between humans and animals. In poems like Coleridge's "Nightingale" and Wordsworth's "Lines" we find speakers mindful of the marring effects of human cognition and action upon animal otherness. We also discover that community is repeatedly represented as a product of such difference and of its violent clashes. As Wordsworth's <i>Home at Grasmere</i> and Coleridge's <i>Ancyent Marinere</i> even more clearly reveal, animal otherness, more than human/animal sameness (as Erasmus Darwin proclaimed), is the principal foundation for community, a community ever observing, belatedly, its difference from and violence toward the myriad animals with which it identifies. In these Romantic-era representations, animals help to realize alternative, perhaps truer or more legitimate, forms of community founded not upon the vagaries of political revolution, reform, or even nationality but upon ritual observance: a working-through of what remains deeply problematical in human beings' relationships with animals.</p>
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<p>In the later eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, animals' "preeminent utility to mankind" (William Kirby, ca. 1835; cited Thomas 28) indeed was, for writers and painters, a social utility: a capacity to produce communities founded upon observance and the playing over "once more" of that which remains unsung or unmemorialized, even violent, in human beings' troubled relationships with nature's creatures. And while Wordsworth's and Coleridge's desire for such animal-derived community would appear to wane in subsequent years, owed in part no doubt to the poets' restored confidence in the institutions and religious orthodoxies they had previously questioned or condemned, at the turn of the century their longing for new, alternative means of social cohesion was acute. Animals uniquely answered their call, as they did the calls of other artists, both for a broader notion of "brotherhood" and for "a transformative process" (Fulford 124) capable of constituting or renewing communitarian connections.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#28">28</a></sup></p>
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<p>One thus finds in Stubbs's portrait of the Pocklington family that the foundational relationship of husband and wife is triangulated and emblematized by the horse, to whom Mrs. Pocklington gives her hand and affections, and beside which the captain stands, legs mimetically poised like the animal's own. Such formal human-animal, quasi-familial similitude of course also serves to emphasize actual human-animal <i>difference</i>. As Onno Dag Oerlemans observes, "[w]hat makes Stubbs' paintings distinctive . . . is that they also very often attempt to render the animal strange, distant, and 'other' than its would-be owner" (9). For Oerlemans, Stubbs represents such domesticated animals "as having an energy and presence <i>not</i> possessed or even understood by the humans around them," a vitality subtly encoded by just such likenesses of "expression" as we find between owner and horse (9-10). And yet the structure of the Pocklington community is established in the human figures' attention to this most valued of Britain's animals, without whose presence and differential tension, it seems, given Stubbs's arrangement, there could be no proper marriage, or minimal community, at all.</p>
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<p>In this foregrounding of animals and of animal-oriented economies of various kinds, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries ultimately represent something of a historical bubble in the cultural articulation of the human and the animal. At no time before or since have domestic and wild animals been so conspicuous within and so central to Western conceptions of human social interconnection and subjectivity. But it was a time that passed. Stubbs and even his more emotive artistic successors fell out of public favor (Vaughan 171). As Britain's social and political structures changed it would appear that animals were less needed as the subjects of these artists' social reimaginings.<sup><a href="/praxis/ecology/fosso/fosso.html#29">29</a></sup> Animals thereupon receded into the pastoral backgrounds and rural memories from which they had come. As Lyle Rexer contends, the French Romantic painter Eug&#232;ne Delacroix (1798-1863) "was, perhaps, the last great Western painter for whom animals really mattered." Since that time animals have been "increasingly absorbed into a corner of the public's consciousness" as trivial symbols "of times past and places elsewhere" (37). Polly Chiapetta similarly perceives animals' decline in the paintings of the English Victorian artist Edwin Landseer (1802-73), whose works anthropomorphically represent animals in such a manner as to bring "the sublime and the ridiculous . . . perilously close" (60). For his part, John Berger mourns the loss even of such distorting anthropomorphisms, for their loss marked animals' definitive cultural disappearance. Today, he laments, "we live without them" (9). Despite the advent of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, in our era we are perhaps farther than ever from his grandfather Erasmus Darwin's social conception of humans and animals as "one family," and from Wordsworth's, Coleridge's, and other artists' depictions of human/animal intra- or inter-familial difference as a basis for cohesion. And yet, as Rexer argues, even in our time, on some level, animal-oriented artists continue to seek "to 'make a connection,' to reforge a broken bond" (40). It may be that these artists' and their Romantic predecessors' representations of animals still retain a certain cultural "utility," providing alternative visions of identity, difference, and community&#8212;even for a post-Romantic age.</p>
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</ol>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Works Cited</h4>
<p class="hang">Anonymous. <i>Goody Two-Shoes, A Facsimile Reproduction of the Edition of 1766</i>. Introd. Charles Welsh. London: Griffish and Farran, 1881.</p>
<p class="hang">Ashton, Rosemary. <i>The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Biography</i>. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Bate, Jonathan. <i>Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition</i>. London: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Berger, John. <i>About Looking</i>. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.</p>
<p class="hang">Black, Maggie. <i>Food and Cooking in Nineteenth-Century Britain: History and Recipes</i>. Birmingham: CBE Design &amp; Print, 1985.</p>
<p class="hang">Byron, Lord. <i>Selected Poems.</i> Ed. Susan J. Wolfson and Peter J. Manning. New York: Penguin, 1996.</p>
<p class="hang">Chiapetta, Polly. "Painters and Pets." <i>Country Life</i> 191 (31 July, 1997): 60.</p>
<p class="hang">Clarke, Bruce. "Wordsworth's Departed Swans: Sublimation and Sublimity in Home at Grasmere." <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 19 (1980): 355-74.</p>
<p class="hang">Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. <i>The Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i>. Ed. Earl Leslie Griggs. 6 Vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i>. 1912. Ed. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960.</p>
<p class="hang">Constable, John. Constable. <i>Paintings, Drawings and Watercolours</i>. Ed. Basil Taylor. London: Phaidon, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Darwin, Erasmus. <i>Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life</i>. New York: AMS Press, 1974.</p>
<p class="hang">Derrida, Jacques. "'Eating Well,' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida." <i>Who Comes After the Subject?</i> Ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy. New York and London: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Eisold, Kenneth. "Loneliness and Communion: A Study of Wordsworth's Thought and Experience." <i>Romantic Reassessment</i>. Vol. 13. Ed. Dr. James Hogg. Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg Press, 1973.</p>
<p class="hang">Enright, Timothy P. "Sing Mariner: Identity and Temporality in Coleridge's 'The Nightingale.'" <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 33 (1994): 481-501.</p>
<p class="hang">Erskine, Lord. "The Speech of Lord Erskine in the House of Peers, On the Second Reading of the Bill for Preventing Malicious and Wanton Cruelty to Animals." London: Richard Phillips, 1809.</p>
<p class="hang">Fruman, Norman. <i>Coleridge, The Damaged Archangel</i>. New York: George Braziller, 1971.</p>
<p class="hang">Fulford, Tim. "Coleridge, Darwin, Linnaeus: The Sexual Politics of Botany." <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i> 28 (1997): 124-30.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>Coleridge's Figurative Language</i>. New York: St. Martin's, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Galperin, William H. <i>The Return of the Visible in British Romanticism</i>. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.</p>
<p class="hang">Hewitt, Regina. <i>The Possibilities of Society: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the Sociological Viewpoint of English Romanticism</i>. New York: SUNY, 1997.</p>
<p class="hang">Ingold, Tim. "From Trust to Domination: An Alternative History of Human-Animal Relations." <i>Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives</i>. Ed. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Johnston, Kenneth R. <i>Wordsworth and "The Recluse."</i> New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.</p>
<p class="hang">Kroeber, Karl. <i>Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind.</i> New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">Lawrence, Elizabeth A. "Melodious Truth: Keats, a Nightingale, and the Human/Animal Boundary." <i>ISLE</i> 6 (1999): 21-30.</p>
<p class="hang">Levere, Trevor H. <i>Poetry Realized in Nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Early Nineteenth-Century Science.</i> Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.</p>
<p class="hang">Matlak, Richard. "Wordsworth's Reading of Zoonomia in Early Spring." <i>The Wordsworth Circle</i> 21 (1990): 76-81.</p>
<p class="hang">McFarland, Thomas. <i>Romantic Cruxes: The English Essayists and the Spirit of the Age.</i> Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.</p>
<p class="hang">McKusick, James C. "Coleridge and the Economy of Nature." <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 33 (1996): 375-92.</p>
<p class="hang">Manes, Christopher. "Nature and Silence." <i>The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology</i>. Ed. Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1996, 15-29.</p>
<p class="hang">Modiano, Raimonda. "Blood Sacrifice, Gift Economy and the Edenic World: Wordsworth's 'Home at Grasmere.'" <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 32 (1993): 481-521.</p>
<p class="hang">Oerlemans, Onno Dag. "'The Meanest Thing that Feels': Anthropomorphizing Animals in Romanticism." <i>Mosaic</i> 27 (1994): 1-32.</p>
<p class="hang">Perkins, David. "Compassion for Animals and Radical Politics: Coleridge's 'To a Young Ass.'" <i>ELH</i> 65 (1998): 929-44.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "Wordsworth and the Polemic against Hunting: 'Hart-Leap Well.'" <i>Nineteenth-Century Literature</i> 58 (1998): 421-45.</p>
<p class="hang">Potts, Alex. "Natural Order and the Call of the Wild: the Politics of Animal Picturing." <i>Oxford Art Journal</i> 13 (1990): 12-33.</p>
<p class="hang">Reed, Walter L. "The Sacred, the Profane, and the Interest of the Secular." <i>JAISA</i> 2 (1996): 1-14.</p>
<p class="hang">Rexer, Lyle. "Defenders of a Kingdom Long Swept Aside." <i>New York Times</i> 2 Feb. 1997, natl. ed.: H37, 40.</p>
<p class="hang">Ritvo, Harriet. "Animals in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Complicated Attitudes and Competing Categories." <i>Animals and Human Society: Changing Perspectives</i>. Ed. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell. London and New York: Routledge, 1994.</p>
<p class="hang">---. "New Presbyter or Old Priest?: Reconsidering Zoological Taxonomy in Britain, 1750-1840." <i>History of the Human Sciences</i> 3 (1990): 259-76.</p>
<p class="hang">Smith, Adam. <i>The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)</i>. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1966.</p>
<p class="hang">Smith, Andrew R. "The Limits of Communication: Lyotard and Levinas on Otherness." <i>Transgressing Discourses: Communication and the Voice of Other</i>. Ed. Michael Huspek and Gary P. Radford. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997, 329-51.</p>
<p class="hang">Stubbs, George. <i>George Stubbs 1724-1806</i>. London: Tate Gallery Press, 1984.</p>
<p class="hang">Taylor, Anya. "'A Father's Tale': Coleridge Foretells the Life of Hartley." <i>Studies in Romanticism</i> 30 (1991): 37-56.</p>
<p class="hang">Thomas, Keith. <i>Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800.</i> London: Allen Lane, 1983.</p>
<p class="hang">Turner, James. <i>Reckoning with the Beast: Animals, Pain, and Humanity in the Victorian Mind</i>. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980.</p>
<p class="hang">Ulmer, William A. "The Society of Death in Home at Grasmere." <i>Philological Quarterly</i> 75 (1996): 67-83.</p>
<p class="hang">Vaughan, William. <i>British Painting: The Golden Age from Hogarth to Turner</i>. London: Thames and Hudson, 1999.</p>
<p class="hang">Verhoog, Henk. "The Scientific Perception of Animals as Object." <i>Between the Species: A Journal of Ethics</i> 7 (1991): 208-13.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, Jonathan. "On Man, On Nature, and On Human Life." <i>Review of English Studies</i> n.s. 31 (1980): 17-29.</p>
<p class="hang">Wordsworth, William. <i>Home At Grasmere</i>. Ed. Beth Darlington. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977, 38-107.</p>
<p class="hang">---. <i>The Thirteen-Book "Prelude."</i> 1805. 2 vols. Ed. Mark L. Reed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">---. and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. <i>Lyrical Ballads.</i> 1798 and 1800. 2nd ed. Ed. R. L. Brett and A. R. Jones. New York: Routledge, 1991.</p>
<p class="hang">Wylie, Ian. <i>Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature</i>. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1989.</p>
</div>
<div class="notesWorks">
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p class="indent"><a name="*"> </a>*&#160;An earlier version of this essay appeared in <i>ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment</i>, under the title "'Sweet Influences': Animals and Social Cohesion in Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1794-1800" (<i>ISLE</i> 6 [1999]: 1-20). It is reprinted here by permission.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="1"> </a>1&#160;&#160;This is not to say that seventeenth-century painters, especially those on the continent, did not depict animals in their works. The Dutch artist Albert Cuyp (1620-91) is but one example. Yet, with the exception of some Flemish and Dutch paintings, such representations of foregrounded animals are few before the advent of the Romantic era&#8212;certainly in Britain's pictorial arts.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="2"> </a>2&#160;&#160; According to William Galperin, "The Haywain" depicts "a world uncontrolled by human or authorial intervention" (87) and governed by what amounts to a different way of seeing (93). This other, animal's-eye vantage repeatedly attracts and blocks the human viewer's gaze, producing a "failure of absorption" in the aesthetic experience (95).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="3"> </a>3&#160;&#160; As Tim Ingold explains, the question "What is an animal?" can be "construed in a number of ways, all of which are concerned with problems surrounding the definition of boundaries, whether between humans and non-human animals, animals and plants, or living and non-living" (1).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="4"> </a>4&#160;&#160;Keith Thomas observes that Linnaeus's <i>Systema naturae</i> (1735) "unabashedly grouped <i>Homo sapiens</i> with other mammalian species and, more precisely, with other primates in the order <i>Anthropomorpha</i>. This may have encouraged the many students of that influential work to think more readily of man as an animal" and to view nature as a realm of evolving rather than static and fixed positions (7). Alex Potts adds that such new ideas about natural order were themselves tied to "changing conceptions of social order" (12)&#8212;in contrast to the medieval and Renaissance paradigms of the <i>scala naturae</i>, recently analyzed by Christopher Manes (20-21) and, in slightly different terms, by Henk Verhoog (208-10).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="5"> </a>5&#160;&#160;Coleridge praised Erasmus Darwin early on as "the most inventive and philosophical of men. He thinks in a new train on all subjects except religion" (<i>Collected Letters</i> I.99). <i>Zoonomia</i>, although not as popular as Darwin's poetical treatise <i>The Loves of the Plants</i>, was nonetheless sought out upon its publication by Wordsworth, some of whose poems in <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, such as "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," notably draw on Darwin. "Lines Written in Early Spring," with its "faith" in plants' and animals' pleasure, also likely draws upon Darwin's work (see Matlak 77-78).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="6"> </a>6&#160;&#160;A measure of this general shift in sensibility can be gauged by Lord Erskine's speech on behalf of his 1809 bill for the prevention of "Malicious and Wanton Cruelty to Animals." Although Erskine acknowledges that humans may "enjoy" animals for food, pleasure, and curiosity, he argues for our benevolent treatment of our fellow creatures, as "[a]lmost every sense bestowed upon Man is equally bestowed upon them&#8212;Seeing&#8212;Hearing&#8212;Feeling&#8212;Thinking&#8212;the sense of pain and pleasure&#8212;the passions of love and anger&#8212;sensibility to kindness, and pangs from unkindness and neglect, are inseparable characteristics of their natures as much as of our own" (4). His view is noticeably close to Darwin's own. Happily for Erskine's cause, Adam Smith's <i>Theory of Moral Sentiments</i> (1759) had pronounced "[t]he wise and virtuous man" to be "at all times willing" to sacrifice his selfish interest "to the interest of that great society of all sensible and intelligent beings" (346). Like Darwin's ideas about nature, Smith's sense of a greater "society" of "sensible . . . beings" offered conceptual opportunities to his contemporaries and successors for reimagining social relationships and identities.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="7"> </a>7&#160;&#160;"I see nothing to loathe in nature," Byron ambivalently observes in Canto 3 of <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i>, "save to be / A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, / Class'd among creatures. . ." (684-86).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="8"> </a>8&#160;&#160;The nineteenth-century term "ecology" is, as Bate notes, comprised of the Greek words <i>logos</i> and <i>oikos</i>: "system" and "dwelling." Coined in 1866 by the zoologist Ernst Haeckel to denote the "economy of nature" and "its friendly and inimical relations" of animals (cited Bate 36), <i>ecology</i> as a term succinctly captures the prior Romantic preoccupation with dwelling (ruins, bowers, cottages) and with whatever system makes such dwelling and social life possible.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="9"> </a>9&#160;&#160;Turner argues that even those who welcomed the forces of progress in England felt "a twinge of uneasiness" and "a touch of longing for the familiar life fading away" (33)&#8212;as many of the works of the Romantic period attest. And, as Turner asks, "What was more 'natural' than beasts? Their paucity of reasoning power only enhanced their symbolic role as emblems of feeling. Moreover, since they exhibited many of the same emotions as people, they served as a very direct way of linking man with nature through the ties of feeling" (33).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="10"> </a>10&#160;&#160; Thomas's <i>Man and the Natural World</i> provides an informative history of these and other cultural influences upon the period's changing attitudes about animals (see 92-191). In contrast to Thomas's arguably more linear view of this history, Harriet Ritvo sees the Romantic-Victorian period as one of paradoxical attitudes and actions towards animals, suggesting both "change in human-animal relations in Britain" as well as "stasis" ("Animals" 108). Indeed few even among those most concerned about animal welfare appear ever to have made a connection between the meat they consumed and the animal suffering they deplored. For the upper classes in England meat continued to be a desired staple (Black 5-7).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="11"> </a>11&#160;&#160; John Berger argues that in fact animals have always (if less noticeably) been "central" to those cultural processes by which human beings "form an image of themselves" out of a system of differences (2)&#8212;and never more so, never more openly and even desperately so, I would add, than in the Romantic era in Britain. In "Eating Well" Jacques Derrida similarly describes human subjectivity as the product of a "schema" of animal speculation and sacrifice, exchange and consumption (113). By this accounting, Western culture can be said to be at its core a shifting economy of physical and symbolical animal exchange&#8212;again, at no time more so in Britain than at the turn of the century.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="12"> </a>12&#160;&#160; All citations from Coleridge's poetry follow the texts of the poems in <i>The Complete Poetical Works</i>, excepting those poems by Coleridge, such as his earliest version of <i>The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere</i>, included in his and Wordsworth's <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="13"> </a>13&#160;&#160; For a helpful historical justification of Coleridge's and Southey's scheme, circa 1792-94, to escape to the banks of the Susquehanna, see Rosemary Ashton's <i>Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge</i> 52.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="14"> </a>14&#160;&#160; David Perkins agrees that "[t]he term 'brother' encoded the[se] Revolutionary ideal[s]" (929). His reading of the poem's "radical politics" as self-consciously exposing Coleridge's and others' democratic sentiments "to mockery" (941) is, however, quite different from my own. It is worth noting that the poem's emphasis on "fellowship" created by sorrow and on the hardening effects of poverty and slavery further connected the speaker's hail to contemporary reformist tenets and concerns, themselves tied to later anti-cruelty acts.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="15"> </a>15&#160;&#160; According to James McKusick, Coleridge's "unique contribution" to his collaboration with Wordsworth on <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> was his "ecolinguistic" conception of language as "holistic" and organic&#8212;a view indebted to eighteenth-century natural history (392).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="16"> </a>16&#160;&#160; Kroeber similarly argues that the poem "warns that one distorts the truths of natural being when one projects into external nature [one's] narcissistic feelings" (73).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="17"> </a>17&#160;&#160; According to Elizabeth A. Lawrence, the phrase "jug jug" signifies the "harsh guttural sounds" produced in the nightingale's song (25). She describes that song "as a rich, extraordinarily vigorous virtuoso performance that includes mournful, almost sobbing notes" (22).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="18"> </a>18&#160;&#160; Regarding the scene's relationship between father and son and its disruption of the poem's "associationist premises," see Anya Taylor's "'A Father's Tale': Coleridge Foretells the Life of Hartley," esp. 38-39. Timothy P. Enright offers a different reading of this turn to Hartley: as a means of self-authorization against poetic tradition and imitation (497-98).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="19"> </a>19&#160;&#160; Drawing upon the work of the late Jean-Fran&#231;ois Lyotard, Andrew R. Smith states that "contemplation of communicability presupposes that the one contemplating is already a part of the <i>sensus communis</i> instantiated by the feeling" (342). In this respect my reading of Coleridge's poem is consonant with Regina Hewitt's own in <i>The Possibilities of Society</i>, although Hewitt sees the text's community of listeners as rejecting the conceit of melancholy largely "because it suggests discontinuity" and an absence of "harmony" (70). I find human and animal difference to be a greater source of social cohesion in the poem than is either similarity or harmony.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="20"> </a>20&#160;&#160; On the intertextual connections between Coleridge's poem&#8212;specifically its description of the water-snakes&#8212;and Erasmus Darwin's "The Economy of Vegetation" in his Linnaean-influenced <i>Botanic Garden</i>, see Ian Wylie, <i>Young Coleridge and the Philosophers of Nature</i> 154. Cf. Trevor H. Levere, <i>Poetry Realized in Nature</i> 11-13. Onno Dag Oerlemans's essay "'The Meanest Thing that Feels': Anthropomorphizing Animals in Romanticism" provides a different reading of Coleridge's representation of animals in the poem (see 17-20).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="21"> </a>21&#160;&#160; The similarity is striking between the moral of Coleridge's poem and the sentiments of <i>Goody Two-Shoes</i>: "These are GOD Almighty's creatures as well as we. He made both them and us . . . so that they are our fellow Tenants of the Globe" (68). Perkins describes several other late-eighteenth-century instances of this popular notion "of loving sympathy with all creatures," including those proclaimed in Sarah Trimmer's <i>Fabulous Histories</i> (1786) and E. A. Kendall's <i>Keeper's Travels in Search of His Master</i> (1798). See Perkins (930-32).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="22"> </a>22&#160;&#160; On a source in Schiller for this setting, see Norman Fruman, <i>Coleridge, The Damaged Archangel</i> (322-23). Fruman also discerns Wordsworthian influences in much of the poem. Regarding the text's drive toward hermeneutic reconciliation, especially in its later, revised versions, see Tim Fulford, <i>Coleridge's Figurative Language</i>, 62-73. Enright reads both this ballad and "The Nightingale" as poems troubled by their derivative and inauthentic status (see, for example, 494-96).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="23"> </a>23&#160;&#160; See Raimonda Modiano, esp. 482-501.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="24"> </a>24&#160;&#160; Cf. Walter Reed. Reed's analysis of works by Kafka and by Blake reveals how animals often lurk behind and inform religious ritual.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="25"> </a>25&#160;&#160; Wordsworth began <i>Home at Grasmere</i> in the spring of 1800, and, as the Cornell edition's editor Beth Darlington contends, a number of passages "clearly express events and feelings of March and April, 1800" (8). The two episodes I consider refer back to this time, and may well have been drafted in 1800, as Kenneth R. Johnston contends (85-91). In this regard, see also Jonathan Wordsworth (17-29). The text's earliest complete manuscript, "B," was not completed until after a long lull, in 1806; hence the poem's double dating here (1800, 1806) to designate its earliest and final dates of composition.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="26"> </a>26&#160;&#160; Perkins cites the standard commentary on this reference to a "milder day": as referring to "a future time when . . . 'all mankind' (l. 256) will share the 'blessedness' (l. 254) that the poet and his sister now know in Grasmere" ("Wordsworth" 443). Perkins finds this reading problematical in its overly sympathetic view of humanity&#8212;a humanity shown in the poem to be prone to murderous hunting (444-45). In fact the "intimation" the Wordsworths receive is primarily one of blessings for their imminent dwelling in the vale; only secondarily, by virtue of their "trust" (l. 255), do they perceive this "love and knowledge" as having the power to bring "blessedness . . . hereafter" to humankind.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="27"> </a>27&#160;&#160; Modiano interestingly interprets the episode of the missing swans in terms of its "active involvement in the elaboration of a non-violent framework of exchange, that of the gift, which secures momentary relief from violence"&#8212;although she also declares that the swans "must die to secure his and Dorothy's survival" (512, 483). Bruce Clarke comments on the strange manner in which at this textual midpoint a surmise of death "intrude[s]," and argues that the swans' disappearance in fact is owed to their symbolic displacement by this pair of new human arrivals (370-71). My interpretation of the episode owes a considerable debt to Clarke, to Modiano, and to readings of the scene by Johnston (89-92) and William A. Ulmer (70).<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="28"> </a>28&#160;&#160; One famous instance of a call <i>un</i>answered is of course Wordsworth's previously mentioned poem "There was a Boy," from <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, in which the Boy of Winander's owl-calls occasionally receive no response. His resulting "gentle shock of mild surprize" (l. 19) seems in the subsequent version of the text, incorporated in <i>The Prelude</i>, to be associated with his death, making him, in this case, the sacrifice to be mourned.<br/></p>
<p class="indent"><a name="29"> </a>29&#160;&#160; Potts also argues that in this "important period of transition" the Enlightenment's and post-Enlightenment's "formalised conventions of [animal] picturing" came increasingly to be seen as either "irrelevant or detrimental to the cognitive content of a naturalistic visual depiction" (28). In short, both the order and ordering of things had changed. See also Ritvo, "New Presbyter or Old Priest?" 272-74.<br/></p>
</div></div></div></div><section class="field field-name-field-authored-by-secondary- field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Authored by (Secondary):&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="role:AUT"><a href="/person/fosso-kurt">Fosso, Kurt</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-field-parent-section field-type-entityreference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Parent Section:&nbsp;</h2><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/node/31532">Praxis Series</a></div></div></section><section class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1263" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sweet influences</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1264" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">animals</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/620" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">social cohesion</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1238" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ecology</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/samuel-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1266" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">stubbs</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1267" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">constable</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/ancient-mariner" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">ancient mariner</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1270" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">to a young ass</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1271" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">the nightingale</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1272" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">fears in solitude</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1273" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">prelude</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1274" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">poor susan</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1275" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">lines written in early spring</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1276" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hart-leap well</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1277" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">home at grasmere</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person-fictional/captain-pocklington" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">captain pocklington</a></li><li class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1279" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">hay wain</a></li><li class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/category/person/erasmus-darwin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Erasmus Darwin</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-opencalais-person-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">Person:&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/kurt-fosso-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Kurt Fosso</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/karl-kroeber" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Karl Kroeber</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/samuel-sharpe-pocklington" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Sharpe Pocklington</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/erasmus-darwin" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Erasmus Darwin</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/william-wordsworth-0" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">William Wordsworth</a></li><li class="field-item odd"><a href="/category/person/george-stubbs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">George Stubbs</a></li><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/person/samuel-taylor-coleridge" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-discipline-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Discipline(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-discipline/literature" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Literature</a></li></ul></section><section class="field field-name-field-nines-type-s- field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above view-mode-fulltext"><h2 class="field-label">NINES Type(s):&nbsp;</h2><ul class="field-items"><li class="field-item even"><a href="/category/nines-type/typescript" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Typescript</a></li></ul></section>Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:05:35 +0000rc-admin22480 at http://www.rc.umd.edu